I'm realizing a really bad flaw exists in the GMail setup.  How do you find old mail where you know the contact, but don't know the words.  I e-mailed myself a photo sometime in February of last year, but I have like 2000 e-mails to scroll through to get back to it.  Gmail doesn't allow you to select a set of dates to go back to, or isolate messages by sender.  Its all about search (of course, because if I'm not searching then they can't place as many ads against it).  Now that I think about it, searching my endless archive of mail is just as inefficient as searching the internet with Google.  There's no context to anything... dates or otherwise.

Now... perhaps if there was a technology that adds user generated context to content...  [cough] ta-ahhem...tag-ahem...  tags [cough] [cough].

So Kiko got sold off, and Skobee slips silently beneath the sea DiCaprio style...   but we still hold out hope in the face of tractionless attempts at fixing what we perceive to be a real problem.   Calendaring and invitations, obviously going hand in hand, seem to work far from efficiently GigaLiz puts it perfectly...

"Every time we have to click through an Evite, we cringe. We can’t say we use Skobee, Renkoo, or even aggregator sites like EVDB’s Eventful, Zvents, and Upcoming on a regular basis — that would require a mass migration by the people we do stuff with. But we do hope that someone makes it easier and more efficient to make social plans online."

Web 2.0 purists feel like Evite sucks, but you know what...  most mainstream tech users I know  have one of two opinions of Evite...   

It does the job...

... or they just don't like public RSVPs. 

I've never heard anyone on my softball team tell me that its unfortunate that Evite doesn't have more functionality.  In fact, the only thing I use that seems to work even better than Evite is a numbered list on the nextNY wiki...  which has even less functionality.   

The problem isn't client side...  in the invitation interaction itself, its server side and its on multiple levels.  Google Calendar didn't kill Kiko.  I don't know anyone that actively uses it.  In fact, I hardly know anyone who uses any calendar other than one their job forced them to... and less than half of the Outlook users I know put personal items on their work calendar.

Here are the nearly insurmountable hurdles anyone in this space needs to get over:

1)  Most importantly, most people just don't want a calendar.  It makes them feel too structured, under pressure, etc.  All these attempts in the "scheduling" space come from people like me who live by their calendar and whose life would be so much easier if everyone else did, too.  We keep thinking that, if there was only a good enough tool out there, we could get everyone using a calander, and that's just unrealistic.

2) Events drive calendar use, and only a minority of events are formatted to work with a calendar.  Think of the average family...  the biggest drivers of the family schedule--the kids' school and after school activities--are not in iCal, hCal, vCal, or any kind of call.  They're on a paper flyer or on a printed e-mail on the fridge.... or maybe written onto the fridge calendar.  Until schools get into Microformats, don't expect mainstream users to either.

3) You never know if the person you're inviting uses a calendar.  The beauty of Evite is that even if the other people never check the Evite again, it works for you when they click yes.  Try doing that to 100 people with an Outlook invite.  Half of the e-mail programs that open the message won't know what to do with it.  It was like when text messaging first took off here.  You didn't just randomly text everyone...  b/c you didn't know if they could get texts.  It took a critical mass of texting enabled phones for people to really get into texting here in the US, and reaching that critical mass took a long time. 

4) People don't want to let you know what they're doing.  What would really drive a lot of calendar usage is if you could negotiate for people's time based on levels of trust, open times in their calendar, etc.  For example, when I schedule a game of pool with my friend Brian, he's pretty much always going to accept an invite as long as he's free.  I should be "ok'd" to book a certain amount of pool in the empty spots in his schedule.  But, how can he expose his schedule to me w/o exposing it to the world, but also not come off like a complete loser if he doesn't happen to have anything booked yet for his Saturday night?   People share bits...  music, videos.. they don't like sharing information about how they spend their time...  b/c it makes them feel committed, locked in.

In the face of this behavior, what kind of scheduling service could ever be successful?

So, Adi Sideman, the CEO of Oddcast, just came into the office as he usually does late Sunday mornings and something he did just reminded me something interesting about the culture here.

He picked up the phone.

Not his phone number... the main line.

"Good morning, Oddcast".

We often talk about the "no touch" style of Google AdSense and other self-serve applications, but something I noticed from the first day I walked into Oddcast always strikes me.  Our phone number is on the website, and people here always pickup that main line.  If the CFO is at my desk and she hears the main line go off, she grabs the nearest phone possible to answer.

Its usually someone who needs a password reset or something silly, particularly if its on the weekend... and I'll bet few of the people who call release they're getting the CEO of the CFO of the company.

A personal touch is something that's really important to the people here and its sort of refreshing.  Admittedly, I don't rush to grab that line if I'm here by myself, but maybe I'll start.

Here's a thought...   to what extent should you count on a GP to catch organizational issues and involve themselves in the day to day issues of a business?  Is this different in a venture company vs. a buyout?  Is failure to execute a problem of management or a problem of oversight of management?  When things go wrong at a company, how does a GP know before its too late?

friend06p: (4:48:32 PM) So are u working on a little person project for myspace?

Ceo21: (4:48:57 PM) Yeah, that about sums it up 

Darren asks this question in response to the recent article in Wired.

He says it compares very closely to the hot, then not, NY club scene, but I think there's a big difference.  Clubs have a pervasive atmosphere to them... a culture.  Certain clubs appeal to certain types of people at certain times.  They trend younger, older, hipster or homeboy, and among these groups you want to have the best of the bunch there.  When younger people "invade" a more mature club, or older, less cool, people invade hotspots for young people, the strength of the club's identity and therefore the brand declines.

MySpace, however, isn't the same club to everyone.  Its flexibility allows groups to form on their own.  Its what danah refers to as "glocalization"...   bringing together your world, not the whole world.  I can discover other Mets fans, other Lacuna Coil fans, people in Bay Ridge, or other Italians.   No club can do that in real life, and so the idea that "whatever you want" might go out of style is something I disagree with.

However, that doesn't mean that MySpace can't fail.  The site is very slow and buggy and has serious scaling issues, like Friendster before it.  It is full of a lot of spam, and as a development platform, its like the Wild West.   Plus, its still pretty closed.  Are these fixable problems?  Definitely.   

Here's what I'd love to see MySpace do to secure its future at the top and avoid some social network pitfalls:

1. Fix the spam problem or at least open up and let someone else fix it.  I'd sign up for any service that blocked any new female with only one picture and no profile bling and mostly male friends to invite me or message me.  Its a very easy algorithm to detect fake profiles.
2. Innovate around your core strength: Upgrade music.  Music is the backbone of the network and the functionality of the player hasn't changed at all.  I'd love to see a MySpace/Pandora or MySpace/Last.fm integration.... anything that enables more radio station like functionality.  Discovering songs one click at a time is not as fun as being able to let it play for an hour or two.  Plus, why can't I break the player off the page and play it on my blog?
3. Scaling issues.  Hopefully, Google will lend MySpace a few PhDs to help the "MySpace Technical Group" which gets a bug report every ten seconds I use the site when a page doesn't load right away.  No reason why they can't get enough servers and bandwidth and fix the code to make the site run smoothly.  I mean, the "check my address book for contacts" thing has never worked! 
4. MySpace Developers Network or Whitelist:  If they keep approching widgets with this cat and mouse game, we'll never see integration with other services reach its fullest potential.  Innovation is what will keep people on the site, and creating a healthy platform for trusted developers to work with will benefit everyone.

One thing I'm going to miss about being at Union Square Ventures is being a part of the conversations that inspire blog posts on Fred's blog.  Fred, Ben and Caterina are talking today about something we were talking about at Union Square Ventures for months... the idea that you could, and maybe should, do business development without ever talking to an actual business development person. 

We were trying to help get Indeed to be featured on an online social network, and then we noticed Dice.com's functional ads with a job search box on Fred's blog.  The social network came back and told us pretty much what Caterina says she told QOOP... use existing inroads to build a path into our service.  In Flickr's case, it was an API, and in our case, they said to run a functional ad powered by the information available in their member database.   

Feedburner accomplished something similar with Typepad.  Instead of doing a distribution deal from a position of weakness on day one, they built their product so that it provided something really useful to the users, RSS stats and ads, that worked with Typepad's feeds.  By the time Typepad agreed to integrate their service, I'd say the bulk of the power Typepad users were already using Feedburner.  Porting my Typepad feed users over was kind of an afterthought.  It became a need to do deal requested by the community which was alreasy using Feedburner.  There was no guesswork as to whether or not it would be worth it.

There are a few key driving forces behind the fact that any of this is possible:

• Interoperability: APIs are making "integration" a matter of plug and play versus recoding anything.
• "Open" for business: Even Facebook is opening up...    Its one thing to create an API from a technical point of view.  Its another to realize that your service can become much more robust and it is in your capitalistic interest to open up to others creating services around you.   I mean, where would MySpace be without the Free MySpace Layout Nation?
• Word of mouth:  Discovery and viral marketing from the ground up is now a legitimate distribution strategy.  I mean, I don't remember seeing any ads or press releases about Pandora.  Even my non-techy friends found it somehow and just said, "Wow this is fuckin' cool...  Hey, did you see this?"   Sure a good biz dev deal can get faster distribution (unless it takes 3 months to do the deal, of course...) but I dunno...  Web 2.0 moves pretty fast.

So what exactly is the place of business development on the web?

Well, I'll give you the other side of it. 

• API's really only go so far...  and they're designed that way, lest you suck the service out of a service.  Certain levels of integration, by design, require negotiated business relationships.  Its nice, however, when you can only focus on the business relationships that are pulled to the table by actual usage.
• Not all the doors are open.  Google's placement and integration into Firefox or XM's appearence on AIM Triton require a few lines of code and hardwiring.  Not every site is open, either.  I'd love to get avatars into every social network out there, but not all of them are as open as MySpace.  I think they'll all become more and more open, but its going to be a long time before I can put my guy in a suit on my LinkedIn profile.  (Come on Reid, how cool would that be?!)
• Content.  Usergen content is easy to mashup, but unfortunately, if I want to use the Goverator's "I'll be back" as my avatar's away message when I'm on vacation, I'm sure I'm probably supposed to pay someone.  Involve licensed content in new and creative implementations, and you're bound to need a bucket of lawyers, some softball bats, and some very crafy and patient biz dev people to get it moving.

MORE:

Someone just asked me if I do any business development in my current role at Oddcast.  I have to admit, part of me wants to say, "Yes, I develop business by trying to be a great product manager."  That wouldn't be the whole truth, though, because there are particular relationships where advanced integration with a cool partner would go a long way to creating significant value for users.  Still, right now I'm basically head down helping to create and if I do this right, consumer distribution will be a function of user value.

Track this meme and add to it:

http://del.icio.us/tag/bizdev2.0

IAC just bought a majority stake in Connected Ventures, which owns Vimeo, College Humor, Busted Tees, and most importantly, BigShocker.

While I hope that all of these sites continue to grow and develop, I hope IAC lets Zack, Jakob, Josh and Ricky loose on some of their other properties, too, because then these really becomes a fantastic deal.  All of these big media companies are buying up these cool social sites, but until the DNA of these sites gets spliced with the rest of the company, they'll just be purely financial acquisitions, which would miss a big opportunities.

Way to go!  Another NYC startup company hits it big.

nextNY is holding its first ever Pitch Camp.

Here are the details...  (As of this morning, there are 11 spots left... you must RSVP on the site.)

Pitch Camp – An opportunity to hone your message and delivery for pitches to investors, customers and partners.

August 16th, 7-9 PM

Columbia Business School
Room 330 in Uris Hall [map ]
3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

Format:
Hour 1 – 6 teams get 2-3 minutes for an elevator pitch. Feedback is provided by the judges, and teams then give another pitch based on feedback.

Hour 2 – 1 team presents a full 20 min investor pitch (10 min presentation and 10 min Q&A). After this, we spend 40 minutes breaking down the pitch and Q&A session in depth with the coaches. While individual parts might be repeated to emphasize a point, the entire pitch will not be delivered again at the end.

Pitch Coaches:
1.  Jay Rand
2.  Alan Kelley
3.  Ken Berger
4.  Kush Wadhwa
5.  David Rose

I'm still not exactly sure what Userplane does, but I know every page that MySpace loads seems to call a userplane server.  Seems to be a pretty integral part of the system, which makes AOL's acquisition really interesting.

I hope their social networking know-how can provide a nice boost to AIMpages.  I remember back when doing your AOL profile was the 1998 version of MySpace and still feel like anything powered by AIM has the potential to be a great social network.  Adding folks who have been doing it for five years can only be a good thing for Team Yellow Guy.

I remember reading John Dvorak in my dad's copies of PC Magazine... or was it PC Monthly...   PC somethingerother.   We got our first computer back when I was in the third grade... in 1987.  It was an IBM PS/2.

And now, he has managed to become the Web 2.0 version of Encino Man...   analyzing web services using the same guidelines that helped me, my dad, and our 20MB harddrive out almost 20 years ago.

First he rips on tagging, and now he's here to explain to us how YouTube became popular.   So let's just run down some of his points:

"Google video, in fact, looks a lot like YouTube, but never achieved this growth despite getting a big head start."

Really?  Hmm... I seem to remember YouTube being around for most of 2005.  Google Video, however, not so much.  It was actually YouTube who had the head start.  Also, is it me, or does Google Video look nothing like YouTube.  Yes, it has sortable videos, but... Where are my friends?  What about my own profile page? 

"What's not so apparent, unless you actually have tried to use the various video sharing sites, is that nobody -- and I mean nobody -- made it easy until YouTube."

Actually, Vimeo made it pretty easy to share video long before YouTube did.  They had about a 6-9 month head start actually.  He continues on the ease-of use bandwagon:

"It's amazing that the YouTube formula for success is simply ease-of-use and convenience. A shocker, huh?"

"I'm hoping that the founders of YouTube Chad Hurley and Steve Chen realize that they may be subtle geniuses insofar as ease-of-use is concerned."

That would make sense if YouTube's userbase was my dad, who needs a really clean and simple UI to get the most out of web services.  But, this is the MySpace generation.  These are the kids who grew up teaching their dads (or moms, of course) how to work the VCR...  when they were eight.  They are net native and ease of use has never stopped them from using MySpace.  Is MySpace easy to use?  Its a UI disaster, but it doesn't matter, because there's joy and satisfaction in getting into the guts of your page and making it work...  and why do they want to make it work?

Because its social!  And I can do what I want with it.

Social and flexible is the reason why MySpace works.  It doesn't have to look pretty... it just has to do what I want and help me connect to others. 

From early on, YouTube focused on getting users to take their videos off of the YouTube site and pass them around, encoded in Flash.  YouTube jumped in the Flash bandwagon early...that was key.  Embed codes were prominently displayed and when each video stopped, you were prompted with opportunities to share.  It was all about the viral features.  Sure, it had to work, but viral/social/portable trumps easy UI in this day and age. 

In the same way, Photobucket has rocketed to the top of the photosharing market in a similar fashion.  Flickr could do anything Photobucket did, but embed codes are a few clicks away whereas on Photobucket, they're right smack under every photo everywhere you see them.    That's very social.  Is Photobucket easy to use?  Umm.. actually... not really.  Its UI isn't as simple, as, let's say, Ofoto or Snapfish, but this generation does not want easy UI... they don't care.  They click everywhere until they find what they want. 

YouTube videos have at times been slow, choppy, etc. but when you give people what they want and tie them together in a social network, it often takes long to shake them for reasons of performance.   

So, the next time Marketwatch or a big tech magazine wants to write an article about why YouTube works... perhaps they should just ask a 15 year old.

Hang tight... I'm having some issues with the discussion group.  The little box doesn't work.  "Reply" does work, though.

So I was just searching del.icio.us for links about Lacuna Coil, because they do this great cover of Enjoy the Silence, and I noticed ads on the results page.  I don't think I've ever noticed those before.

Def doesn't bother me...    I'm searching, I see ads.  That's normal. 

I also added a del.icio.us network badge, which I think is the tipping point for me for a slight blog "reorg".  I've got too much crap in the sidebar not exactly in the order that I want.   Look for some changes coming in the next week. 

I'm thinking of doing a half screen blog area on the left, and then two sidebars on the right... one with identity stuff, like my avatar, AIM status, my BlogLog, etc... and then links, comments, etc. on the other one.

I know I'm going to have to reset my catagories.  I'm realizing that most of my blogs fit into like eight catagories and then I've also got both a "Friends and Outings" and "Outings and Friends" catagory.  I don't know how that happened.  So I'm at the airport now, shelling out another six bucks for 60 minutes of TMobile wireless.  Actually, I don't mind it, because I use it sparingly, since DTUT covers me pretty well in terms of wireless usage. 

I was reading apophenia and she commented on the nature of the blogger/audience interaction...

"For me, the plausible deniability invoked in blogging is strong. I can convince myself that i write for me and me alone ::wink:: and convince myself to be shocked when i receive feedback. I can check my stats, but those are just numbers - nameless, faceless people. Yet, here i am, speaking to nameless, faceless people, only i'm required by this situation to convince myself that you do really exist, even if i cannot see you. In this situation, i have the expectation that i am a face to you and you're just an assumption to me. It really brings life to the idea that i'm just a talking head."

She's actually studying the socialogy behind blogs and social networking over the web, among other things and she writes some really thoughtful stuff.  Her archives go back to 1997, making her the earliest blogger I know.

This trip was fantastic for me.  I feel reenergized.  Beware my next big project.  I hadn't actually taken a real non-family vacation since.... well, I can't actually remember.  Perhaps it dates all the way back to when Deirg and I went to Jill's wedding.  This vacation thing could be a good thing, even if I am enjoying my life.  Sometimes, its good to get a restart.

So, I'm looking at my fellow passengers waiting to get on.  These are all the cheap people, because there was a $200 difference between the red eye and the afternoon flight.  I'm debating what will make me sleep easier....  light food or a big turkey sandwich.  Either way, even if I don't get good sleep, I'm heading straight to the gym when I get into the city.  That will make me feel better.  I'm looking forward to that post-gym shower.  Ok, boarding soon.   I gotta figure out what zone I am.

Oh, PS...   Good for the Scott Peterson jury.  We all knew he was guilty.  Of course, I still can't figure out how, where, when, or why... but I suppose that doesn't matter.  You know some goofball will marry him while he's in prison, too.

Here's my attempt at adding something to the vocabulary of the blogosphere.

I often write posts about things I'd like to see on the web... everyone does.  The number of web services out there has exploded and, in turn, generated a TON of other ideas in the process... hence all these mashups.

But not all of us can code.  (I'm thinking about teaching myself a little php/mysql over the next year...   feel free to tag me books, beginners sites, etc with the for:ceonyc tag on del.icio.us). 

So, instead, why don't we try and match the idea people with the execution people using del.icio.us.  I propose a tag:

Anyone who has an idea for a technology enabled service, or simply an improvement/add-on to one can tag their own blog posts (or anyone elses if they see one) with wibci.

wibci   (pronounced wib-key)

Wouldn't It Be Cool If...

I've gone ahead and tagged my "convert to meatspace" idea to start things off.  I'd love to see what people come up with.  I'm also thinking about doing a wiki where people could just throw all these ideas out there, collaborate on them, and essentially outline whole services together.

Corporations and private equity firms have, over the years, created a number of different types of transactions and resulting structures to meet their strategic needs. We've seen carveouts, spinouts, joint ventures, special purpose vehicles, etc. Each is meant to get the right kind of resourses to the right kind of projects within the context of the larger organizational goals.
Many times, that means pushing assets away from the company for various reasons with the option for a buyback or something. This happens many times in the pharmaceutical industry in the case of "orphan drugs"--compounds that have been developed, but never really marketed or even fully tested. Its more often a result of lack or organizational bandwidth, either in sales channels, or simply strategic attention span than it is for lack of resourses. There are some private equity firms that will buy these compounds, match them with other similar products in a sales channel--other orphan drugs--and try to revive them. Often, the seller retains some right to the deal in the form of equity or some kind of call facility.
Lately, I've been wondering if this could work for web services. There are a lot of "orphan" web properties out there that don't seem to fit in a company's strategic vision anymore that could be significantly improved with some "startup" type focus, ambition, and creativity. VCs approach this situation by seeding a competitive service and climbing uphill to develop a brand and a userbase from scratch.
What if VCs could take stakes in existing services, infuse them with some entreprenuerial talent, and reinvigorate them, giving the owner the chance to buy them out if their operation was successful?
Take Evite, for example. Everyone knows Evite and thinks of it first when planning something. Yet, the service hasn't changed at all in like five years. Clearly that's an orphan property. Perhaps IAC can't seem to fit it somewhere, so they're not focused on it. Yet, there are a lot of entrepreneurs thinking and building around the calendaring and event space. They've got an uphill climb to reach the kind of usage that Evite has--but yet Evite doesn't seem to be taking the best advantage of that usage either. I think it would be interesting to go to IAC with an offer to take a synthetic position in that property, turn it around, and then have IAC buy you out after you've done your job. Its a little bit like when consultants take options as part of their compensation, but in this case the equity would have to be tied to some agreed upon metric beforehand.
The target web services would benefit from some fresh ideas and new perspective... Perhaps even an expertise not present within the company at the moment. Maybe all of the really thoughtful event people have left IAC because Evite has languished as a property. I don't know, but I'm quite sure Evite isn't the only one that fits this profile. Up until recently, Citysearch was in this same boat at AOL, but they found the resources and made it a priority to turn it around on their own.

Being able to work with an existing property would have its pros and cons for an entrepreneurial management team. On one hand, they would benefit from an existing userbase, synergies with other properties within the company, and better resources. On the other hand, culture might be an issue. A culture that is resistant to change might be the reason why the service languished in the first place. There's something to be said for being able to create a culture from scratch.

Working with a small set of trusted VCs. However, might prove very beneficial and have unanticipated benefits. When a company opens the kimono to a vc, the vc becomes better informed about where the current technology leaders are going to try to lead the market. They become better able to fund accordingly, creating the systems that spur innovation. They also become better partners, since they have their ear to the ground and may be able to find properties that fit with the company's strategic vision.

Does anyone else have any ideas about a languishing web property or service that could use some startup style ingenuity better able to take advatage of the platform its on?

     Last week, I had dinner with Larry from GM and he asked me a question.  Now that I'm on this side of the table, what am I learning about how VCs work that would help an LP better assess the groups they were going into?  Admittedly, I've only been here about a month, but one thing has become very apparent to me.  At GM, we thought a lot about how to diligence a network and it always proved very difficult.  One could extrapolate that some VC who spent a few years building Stratacom obviously had some kind of a network, but a lot of people worked in that organization.  How could you really tell who still had live contacts and what did they mean?  Reference lists?  Well, most LPs ask for reference lists and get back a list of CEOs and other VCs.  Both, to be honest, are pretty poor samples.  Every CEO uses their board differently, and a lot of the CEOs weren't even at the company at the time of the initial investment, so they're not going to give you a lot of insight into the investment process.  Its good to hear that a VC behaves well on a board and adds value, but you also want to understand how investment decisions actually get made as well, and the insight into that is tougher to come by.  As for other VCs, I've never heard of a VC bashing another VC.  At worst, they won't comment.  That's not entirely helpful. 
     Perhaps the most important contact that no LP ever asks for is the "first non-VC call."  No VC can possibly know every single little detail going on in every niche that they play in.  They need to rely on an active network of practitioners and experts that they rely on to get a "first read" on a new technology or a company.  It might involve setting a company up with a potential customer to get feedback on their product or their pitch.  Sometimes, its just a market call from an experienced entrepreneur already in the trenches.  Either way, understanding the quality of the "network in the field" and how a VC uses that network is key to understanding how a VC wades through their opportunity set.
     At USV, if we're looking at a new online advertising technology, I know who we'll probably call not just for market intelligence, but to feel out the team/entrepreneur.  Its also a great test for a company we're interested in to send them to someone that we know that they can pitch their wares to, so that we can get the feedback afterwards. 
    If you're an LP diligencing a fund, you want to know who those first calls are.  Ask a VC what the four or five areas that he or she is most interested in at the moment, or the spaces of the last four or five deals that got past their first screen.  Who were the first non-VC, non-customer diligence calls?  Who did they call for the quick market read?  Did your VC just look at an RFID deal for supply chain?  What manufacturer did he call to see if the technology was applicable?  Is that a contact the VC goes to often?  Is the contact a real decision maker?  Do any other VCs speak with that contact? 
Often times, the quality of a quick read market call is going to depend on the quality of that first non-VC call on a deal that passes the first screen.  That's not someone who shows up on your typical VC/CEO reference list, but they're obviously key to the deal process.

Link: WSJ.com - America Online Launches AOL 9.0 Security Edition.

First of all, I'm at the Heritage Partners annual meeting, wirelessly connected and using Database 2.0 live, our new monitoring software that Jeff the Intern and I created.  This is truly the bleeding edge of the GM PMI group's technology usage.  There is one bizzare bug that I'm sure Jeff will fix...  for some reason you can't type in apostrophes in any of the comments.  I use a lot of contractions, so its an issue. 

Anyway, I was reading this article on AOL and also MSN's agreement to continue using Yahoo for ad placement.  Yahoo, MSN, and Google are quickly dividing up the net, and its just amazing to me how far AOL has fallen and how many missteps they've made along the way.  They realy need to just blow the whole thing up and start all over again...   pitching this clunky and glitchy software for a fee that doesn't justify its value.  Basically, they failed to call the future.  They failed to catch the broadband wave, and worse, they failed to understand how their users used the net.  Subscribers are fleeing in large numbers and AOLs response is to keep throwing new versions of its software at them.  Now security is the big selling point...   I guess when your software slows end users' computers and crashes all the time, its hard to keep pushing the "making the web easier" pitch. 

One big misstep was failing to capitalize on their stickiest asset...  AOL IM.  AOL still has the most widely used instant messenger by far, but a lot of good its doing them as people drop the service and switch screenames for a free one. 

Guarantee you, though...   my dad will be the last paying dialup customer.

NOTE:  DOESN'T WORK YET...   DAMN!

For those of you that can bear my awful layout, you might have noticed a new little gray box on the left.  That's a discussion group completely seperate from the posts on my blog.  Anyone can participate, and anything they write will get autoposted to my sidebar.

Here's the discussion group concept:

We've been talking around a lot of things about Web 2.0, but I'd like to get down to the nuts and bolts.  What's missing in the user experience?  Who has it right?  What is "right"?  Lots of people have been talking theory (including us at USV!) and that is important, too, but this group is about where the rubber meets the road.  Who's in?  Add your name and reply.

Here's my opening post:

"First there was mashing.  Lately, there's been bashing.  While a lot of people believe in the promise of Web 2.0 (even if they can't define what it is) there's definitely been a clamoring for more substance and less theory.  This open discussion, being hosted on the side column of my blog is meant to focus on real applications of Web 2.0 theories, including specific companies, real suggestions for improvements, new ideas for applications that would  work, and how to create a differentiated user experience that drives adoption. 

The first topic is whether or not we flipped the wrong model--whether or not user-centric business models have actually changed the value to the end user and their experience.  Has "Web 2.0" actually changed the value proposition of the web or have we spend too much time building businesses differently and not enough time rethinking the way people actually want/need to use the web?  What specific areas have truly improved and what's lacking?"

If there's anyone preferably in Northern NJ (but NYC possible) who listens to podcasts that would be willing to sit for an interview for a couple of hours, please contact Bill Bartlett at: billb@subassoc.com