Think of ScanSafe as a kind of enterprise NetNanny for Web 2.0.   They just came out with a report that paints the blog world as a seedy hangout for foul-mouthed pornmongers.

From Ars Technica...

"ScanSafe's Monthly "Global Threat Report" for March 2007 says that up to 80 percent of blogs host offensive content, ranging from "adult language" to pornographic images. The company suggests that businesses should be aggressive about preventing users from accessing some or all of this material. And of course, they'd hope that you'd use their products to do so. ScanSafe says that it discovered the "offensive" nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers."

I don't think professional people need a piece of technology to prevent them from seeing a dirty word here and there.  If your employees are accessing truly inappropriate content at work, perhaps you should beef up your screening not in the web browser, but in your HR department.   Just a thought...

Ok, since I joined USV in February 2005, I've...

Broken two Treo 650's.

Had a Canon S500 stolen.

Dropped a Fisher C-1 in the Hudson River.

Had my bike stolen.

Had my car roof and one tire slashed.

Had a power source blow out on my new computer HP Media Center.

Finally had my old computer die out on me.

Lost my baseball glove.

Had my first PPC 6700's USB port break, rendering it unchargable.

Well, today, add my replacement PPC 6700 to that list.  It was stolen, along with several other phones of ZogSports football players, from Riverbank State Park on 138th/Riverside Drive.  When I went back to tell the ref, she already had two or three other phones on her list.  Later on, I called my phone, and some guy picks up and says he wants 100 bucks for the phone back.  Right, like I'm going back up to 138th street with a 100 bucks cash at night to buy my own phone back from a guy who won't just return it.  I told him to drop it off at the police station, leave his contact info, and I'll make sure he gets a $100 reward.  He wasn't up for that, and so I wasn't up for showing up to get my phone.  I'll talk the loss, thanks. 

So, tomorrow, I'll be going back to my slightly glued together Treo 650, quite unhappily.

Because more friends make us feel more loved...   Finally, you can now upload your webmail contacts to find all those people who previously didn't want to admit to having a MySpace profile.

Sah-weet....   stalker features.

However, it's painfully slow... I mean, like Friendster 2004 slow.

"82% of respondents noted having an avatar “because it is fun,” while 66% also noted a key driver was “because it’s a cartoon version of myself""

Man... that's just so amazingly insightful...  People like avatars because they are fun and because they are cartoon versions of themselves.  Wow.

I mean... wow.

I gotta hand it to the WeeWorld folks...  the survey they just released really sheds some light on why people like avatars.  And here we were making avatars that were NOT fun and ones that looked like OTHER people.  Well, shit... now we've got to push back this week's Voki launch and rebuild the whole damn thing from scratch.  At least we saved ourselves from a lot of embarrassment.

Also discovered in this survey... 

• 100% of WeeWorld users also use the internet.
• WeeWorld users win coin flips about 50% of the time.
• 0% of WeeWorld users are time-travelers.
• 100% of WeeWorld users have answered survey questions before.

I guess that's what you do when you have $15 million sitting in the bank... you pay PR firms to makeup surveys.

Next week:  WeeWorld surveys its users on whether or not they like cheese.

If you're a young entrepreneur tempted to get bought by a big company because you think it will be a safe, supporting place to help nuture your idea, talk to Dennis Crowley:

"It's no real secret  that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected.  The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us..."

Dennis had hinted about his departure back at SXSW and I'm sure the growth of Twitter didn't help make him feel any better about being stuck in a place that wasn't helping Dodgeball innovate. 

I think it's fair to say that if you get your startup bought by someone, you should pretty much consider it to be the end of innovation and, if nothing else, the beginning of monetization.  That's why  I hope Ev and Biz  take an investment from a VC for Twitter (I hear there's a great VC firm in NYC, btw...)  and get enough resources to help it really grow.  Let it ride boys... because no one likes wondering what coulda been from inside a big corporate cube.

I don't even think I could draw a line straighter than this...   Here's the growth of nextNY over the last year+.  We started out with 79 interested members, and we're at about 780 at the moment.

Reprise Media just got bought by Interpublic.  That's really fantastic and I can't say enough about Pete and Josh and the rest of the Reprise folks.   They really know their market and obviously Interpublic recognized this.  There are a lot of players in the SEO space, but few as sophisticated and thoughtful about their business as Reprise. 

Good luck with Phase 2 and congrats!

I'll admit it.   I have Friendster nostalgia.   It is the first social network I started using, back in 2003, and admittedly, I went on several Friendster dates.  :)

But then, using it was like watching paint dry...  it folded under its own weight, and got swamped by MySpace's speed and flexibility.

But the thing is, we may have forgotten Friendster, but few of us deleted our profiles on it.  Friendster is still a huge social network... lying dormant...   waiting.   

Somewhere, there's a magic spell or a feature that will awaken the beast so that people find a reason to go back to it.  Today, NewsCorp may have uttered the first words of that incantation by blocking Photobucket videos.

If I was at Friendster, I would put the PR and marketing pedal to the floor and announce support for Photobucket videos and play the "NewsCorp is big and evil" card to the max.  Go scrape up a couple of viral videos, too.... whatever it takes.  It's a chance to steal some thunder and capitalize on users' continued frustration with MySpace's control tactics on a site that gets more and more spammy everyday.

And while we're on the "if I was at Friendster" subject, it's pretty obvious to me that Friendster, in its current condition isn't really going to make an attractive purchase to anyone.... so why then, do they insist on maximizing revenue by making the site uncomfortably commercial?  They're mixing True dating site profiles in with regular search results and Google Adsense ads wind up in the must awkward of places.  It's a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  How much revenue could they possibly generate from their current userbase?  Even if they do manage to break even, who would want to buy a barely profitable has-been?

Strip out the ads, get some killer features in there, and go on the marketing offensive...  because now is the time to get in front of the "MySpace sucks" parade and lead it.

So here's a question...

Voki launches next Wednesday and the question came up...  Beta logo or no?

Here are three good reasons for it and three reasons against it, but I'd love to hear your feedback.

For:

1. The product is new and sure to have a few bugs and require some immediate changes.  The "Beta" label lets people know that they're using the first public version and a few things might need to get updated/fixed... sets expectations.
2. The idea of a perpetual beta is a good philosophy, because it implies continuous development.
3. Says that we're not done and expect more functionality in the m0nths to come.

Against:

1. "Beta" isn't really accurate.  If it is public and anyone can use it, its not really your Beta... its your product.  Public Beta is a contradiction in terms.
2. Beta isn't an excuse and shouldn't be used as one.  If something doesn't work, you fix it as soon as possible.   You always innovate with new features...  and labeling something a beta doesn't get you off the hook for anything, let alone any sympathy from users.
3. Beta is sort of a passe terminology... almost a little bit of a cliche now... totally overused by Web 2.0

What say you blog readers?  To beta or not to beta?

Hey Folks...

I'm going to be talking to my class tonight about the future of some of the more visible technology companies... and how each one seems to be encroaching on the spaces of the others...   Google building office apps, Microsoft releasing consumer electronics, Apple moving into TV, Yahoo!... well...  where does Yahoo! want to go anyway?   Remember when AOL was on this list, too?   Is it a Google and Apple world?  Is Microsoft really dead?   What about Nintendo backing its way on the web through its Wii browser?

Here are what I see as the most interesting questions:

• How far will Google go with its office app strategy... and.. well, why?
• Will Google be successful with other types of media advertising, like TV and radio?
• How will Yahoo! integrate all of the social apps it bought and will they make another run at a social network like Facebook?  What are they trying to build?
• Will Apple control all my access to media?
• Will Apple ever gain a major foothold on the web?  Does the fact that they don't seem interested in it mean that the web isn't the place for mainstream rich media consumption?  What does that say about YouTube?
• Where does Microsoft fit into all this?  How long can their OS and applications business survive in a world of Google and open source? 
• Who else can be a major player of such size and scope?  Sony?  What about the media companies?   AOL?  IAC?  NewsCorp?
• Does eBay become the phone company?
• What about Amazon? 

It should make for an interesting discussion and I'd like to provide some further post-class reading...     If anyone knows of any great "Future of..." posts from reputable sources, I'd love to hear what the thought leaders are saying about the direction of the big guys.  I'd be very appreciative if anyone could post links in either the comments or tag something for:ceonyc.   Thanks... I'll follow up with another post about the best ones that came in.

There is lots of debate as to what the bottlenecks for innovation are in NYC.  Space.  Cost.  Money.  Professional services with startup knowhow...     And one approach at solving this is the incubator.

Ahhh, yes... the incubator. 

Because there's nothing better than a machine that grows babies, chickens, and startups. 

But seriously, what exactly does an incubator do and where are they in NYC?

One thing that really struck me was that, when I was at USV, incubators didn't seem to get prominent attention in the startup world.  I found them tough to locate and I wasn't always aware of what was going on in them.

I'm curious about people's experiences with incubators and if there isn't something that can be done to elevate awareness about them here in NYC.   

Here are a few that I know of, but would like to know more about:

NYSIA Incubator
NYU Stern Incubator
Polytechnic Incubator
Second Century (Pace)

Perhaps it is worth doing some kind of nextNY event where reps from all the incubators can get together and just tell people what they're all about?

If you've been involved with one of these, you should join nextNY, b/c we're a group that really wants to know about these sorts of things and could be where you get your future tenants.

New technology becomes a commodity over time.  That's just the way it works.

Someone comes out with a new feature, than everyone copies it, then it just becomes a standard.  That's good for everyone, except the people who made businesses based on those new features (cough... Tivo... cough cough).

Mozilla's Project Coop may just be the beginning of "social" being built further down in the stack... a layer more deeply integrated into how we experience the web.   If the web is the operating system, that sort of makes the browser part of the "hardware" to me...     It's really exciting and something I'll be tracking more closely, b/c I certainly can't depend on all of those blogs and social networks to somehow come together on a single identity standard or FOAF-like format.

It was a running joke when I was at Union Square Ventures that my job was to download as much rogue software to my laptop as possible.   I'm a user... first and foremost.  When we saw deals, my first question was, "When can I start using it?

Over the last few years, I've been in a fantastic position, both as a blogger, a VC analyst, a connector in nextNY and a product manager, to try and really get my hands dirty with so much social media...   very much like getting the opportunity to live in another country and get immersed in the language.  You can take Spanish classes all you want, but spend six months in Spain and you'll be more than just fluent... you may even start to think a few thoughts in Spanish. 

So when Greg Verdino wrote about how social marketers need to get their hands dirty to understand this stuff, he couldn't be more on point:

"My point isn't that I know more than they do.  Maybe I do, maybe I don't.  My point is that everyone in this business owes it to themselves (not to mention their clients) to experience social media firsthand.  It is only by rolling up your sleeves and getting involved with these channels as a consumer (even as a power user) that you can truly understand how to leverage them (and tap the active communities that use them) for marketing.  You can't be a passionate user of everything (who has time for that?) but I firmly believe that you do need to at least try any new form of media that you plan to recommend to your clients.  The list of services I've tried is as long as my arm -- I haven't loved every one of them but at least I can look my clients in the eyes and give them my personal perspectives on them all."

What's most difficult to do is to converse with people who haven't gotten their hands dirty and attempt to debate the right course of action when marketing or building products for these spaces. 
This is especially true in design, where many people are more focused on making something look fantastic versus being functional--a typical approach by someone who doesn't actually use an application. 

I know I can never speak for every user... and every user is different...  but I can see, from the inside, what people are doing in this spaces and within these applications.  I talk to them and ask them why.  Why are you in this social network versus another?  How often do you go to it?

It's a little bit like "management by walking around".  It's very undervalued, but its important to get out of your office and walk around on the factory floor once in a while to truly get a feel for how things are going on the line.

I think marketing & PR firms, VC firms, anyone who has any kind of business interest whatsover in social media needs to mandate that the decision makers on your staff, right on up to the top, all "walk the floor".   Maybe Fridays should be "social media days" where the whole office plays in MySpace, Second Life, blogs, plays World of Warcraft, Twitters, etc...   Like Google's 20% time.  Take some Flickr photos, poke some people in Facebook...   (virtual pokes only, please)...  Hell, go nuts and create a few speaking stand-up comedy avatars.  (Shameless Oddcast pitch)  The point is, "getting it" isn't a function of being smart, or having experience with other forms of media...   

It's participating!

It's not really about the avatar.  No one really cares about the avatar... well, not about a functionless avatar anyway.  No matter how good a little fake picture of you might look, 3D, 2D, blinking, jumping, etc..., if all it does is represent you, like a digital placeholder, it's value is going to be a little limited.  (See my sidebar if you disagree.)

It's the voice.

Ooooooooh....  controversial.  :)

People have been asking me a lot how an avatar product is supposed to make money and why anyone should care.

Well if I think of us purely as an avatar play, I think I'd seriously struggle to answer that question.

Yet, no one ever asks that question about voice applications.... and I like to think of us as more of a communication platform... a cute, dressable communication platform that you can make bald if you want to.

Now, when I think of voice on the web...  it's just about the most boring visual experience I can think of.   (And the web is supposed to be visual, right?)   Ever watch an iTunes song play?  You can just watch the little timer bar count down and that stupid little diamond inch its way across the tube....   or, for a truly riveting experience, you can use the Visualizer, in case you want to know what it's like to play iTunes while tripping on acid.

I mean, seriously what's that supposed to be?

Voice is a powerful medium.   It invokes an emotional response and has been doing so for years... you know... with that phone thing that people hold so near and dear and pay 100 bucks a month for.  And I don't think it's a half step to video either...  I don't think we're going to one day replace all our voice calls with video calls, lest we wind up calling each other from the bathroom wall Spaceballs style. 

But, on the web, it needs a visual...   a compelling visual that resonates with the viewer and representative of something, but at the same time whose creation doesn't represent a serious barrier to usage.

Enter the avatar.... the speaking avatar. 

Imagine a poker game online.   All you see is a table and cards... players are represented by text. 

Not so interesting.

Ok, so instead of text... how about life action webcam video.

Um...  yeah... right...  kind of complicated... and... well, I don't think you really want to see exactly who you're playing online at 3AM.  Nor do I think they always want you to see them.

So you throw in voice...  Voice is cool, b/c then SouthrnBoy32 now has a bit of a drawl to him, and now your game has character...  except... it doesn't really have character..  it has disembodied voices emanating from the abyss.   Sort of weird and uncentered.

But with a talking character, you visually center and give context to voice.  So, its really avatar wrapped voice, not a voice enabled avatar.

So when I think of places I'd like to integrate Voki into, I think of all of the places I'd love to add and enchance voice communication...   my fantasy league message board, invitations and cards, chat, mobile services.

So, if I don't always get excited about virtual worlds conferences, it's because I'm actually a voice guy first, avatar guy second.

PS... This post wasn't meant to be self serving... it was meant to explain why I get excited about what I do and what we're going to offer.

So Tim Marman and I are attempting to singlehandedly shift the NYC startup scene to the outer boroughs and now we've got the help of Adam Quirk, who has graciously agreed to host a Brooklyn gathering of tech and digital media folks at his loft.

So if you have a startup in Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope, Bay Ridge, or my own place of origin, Bensonhurst...    or if you're a Brooklyn resident, come say hello!  RSVP Only!

Obsessive SXSW Twittering aside, I've been thinking a lot about what the "big picture" is there, and today I got a big clue.

For those of you who don't know...   Twitter is service that provides an identity layer above texting and a single gateway by which to communicate with friends over SMS.  It also extends to the web and IM.

So, I'm ceonyc on Twitter... just like I am everywhere else.  If you were my friend, I'd get your texts anytime you texted to 40404.

And if you wanted to directly message me, you'd text "d ceonyc" so it knows to go directly to me... again to 40404.

Well, the site has APIs and RSS feeds, but today they took a really big step.  By allowing the "d" function to be part of the API code, they're allowing services to plugin to the system sort of the same way people are trying to use IM bots.  The big (and useful) difference is that when I'm sitting on IM, I'm usually at my desktop and don't need a bot's help.   But with Twitter, when I'm on my phone, I can just send a note like "d weather 11209" and get my current weather if someone sets up such a service.

So, what we've got is a simple protocol, a controllable identity layer that allows me to control who reaches me, when, where, etc., and a leverageable API... one that businesses can take advantage of to build real services.  I mean, who's really going to remember the shortcodes of every business on the planet that wants to be mobile... but if all you need to know is 40404 and a screename, I think you'll see an explosion in Twitter services.

Boy, there's a dream BizDev job...

I think if you wanted to just charge commercial entities to use the service, there's your business model.   If there aren't VCs all over this thing, not because all the geeky bloggers use it, but because of its potential to make SMS a real business platform, then they're missing the big picture.  What I hope they don't do is raise some ridiculous number like 10 million dollars and try to do everything too fast too quickly.   

Evan, I think you've got something.  Go raise 2 million to get the servers to operate much faster, hire some more dev folks, and keep plugging away!

You know what's amusing... there's already TwitterSquatting going on.  The sports, news, weather, find, local, and where screenames are all taken... empty, but taken.   

Now if I could only "bundle" my friends and have each bundle have its own individual settings to be turned on and turned off with one felt swoop, that would be fantastic. 

This morning, I was reading my feeds on the train using Newsgator Mobile.   David Armano wrote this post and told me to go here.   Not just go here, but "Stop what you're doing and go read this."

The timing was perfect... I was just about to cross the Manhattan Bridge when I read it... so I could actually click on it, and get a web connection and read the article before going back underground again.

So I clicked, and the little hamster on my PPC-6700 hit the BusinessWeek site, which automagically detected that I was on a mobile browser and sent me straight to here, a mobile site powered by Crisp Wireless.  Um...  I'm sorry...  I asked to go to a very specific place on the web and I have the screen and horsepower to be able to read it... so send me there.  Clicked again... same garbage.  Huh?  If I wanted to read Bruce Nussbaum's fantastic speech (and it was fantastic) on design that I got as a recommendation from a smart guy like David Armano, why on earth would I be interested in your WAP front page with like 14 "Top Stories" on it.  Take me to where I clicked!  That's the way the web works!  That's really annoying.  Thumbs down for BusinessWeek mobile.  I couldn't get to the link and had to read it in the office.

Contrast that with Facebook that continues to have the most useful mobile experience I've ever had in a WAP site.  I can do just about anything on the mobile site that I can do at my desktop...  Message, Add friends, read my newsfeed.   It's really great stuff.

Google also has a solid set of mobile sites, but here's something interesting that, as far as I can tell, just started happening in the last couple of weeks.

Try Googling someone from your mobile browser and clicking on the link.  It doesn't quite take you to that site... it shows you the site in a kind of frame, but the bottom half of the screen has a frame with some Google functionality to it.  And, the URL is a google URL.  You haven't really left Google...  you're being shown the web with a Google wrapper on it.

Imagine if this happened on the web.  I think there would be an uproar, no?  If I have a site getting some mobile traffic that was found on Google, I'd rather it not be seen in a wrapper, thank you.

So, there you have it... the Ugly, the Good, and the "Isn't this bad?  How come no one is talking about this?" of the mobile web.

My Sprint phonebill is $116 a month.

I used 61 daytime minutes last month, and an additional 500 something anytime minutes.

I have 1000 text messages (I used about 400 at SXSW thanks to Twitter).

I have EVDO and can use my phone as a modem.... although that hardly ever works... and I gotta be honest, the EVDO's really not that fast.

So, today, I called Sprint and asked what we could do to lower my bill.  For 10 bucks less, I could go to 450 daytime minutes.  Ok... that's a start.

Oh... just one thing... I'll have to start a new two year contract with Sprint. 

Um... yeah.. no thanks.  I mean, its not like they can offer to upgrade my phone... I already have the PPC-6700.  What could they upgrade me to?  An implant in my head?  Locking me in doesn't really provide me much value at all.

So, I'm declaring myself a free agent.  Any carrier can come and bid for me.

If they can get me the same phone, good coverage in my area, unlimited data EVDO, phone as modem, 1000 texts, free nights and weekends starting at 7 and about 400 daytime minutes, I'm willing to pay about $85 for that, month to month, no contract... after tax.  That's $1020 a year... I think a thousand dollars is definitely enough money to pay for wireless service. 

Come and bid for me, carriers!   I will switch at $85!

Isn't there some carrier marketing person reading this blog that can make this happen?

If you think you're overpaying for your current service, please comment on this post with what you want and what you think is a reasonable price to pay for it.  Be fair... they need to run a business. 

Then, tag this, digg this... we'll all put ourselves up for bidding together!   We're valuable customers and we want our service providers fighting for us!   

Who's with me??

I think this one has legs...and don't worry...I'm not going anywhere. Sometimes, I think about what might happen to my digital presence when I'm gone. Sometimes, people's blogs and MySpace pages become comment section shrines, only because that's the only thing the public has access to.

In my case, at some point, my Typepad subscription and domain registration would expire, and my blog might disappear.

Now, lucky for me, I know a couple of folks over at 6A and so if news of my unfortunate demise reverberated throughout the blogosphere, I hope they might be nice enough to make my blog a freebie.

But then what of my email buddies, Twitter friends, and friends across various social networks? How would many of them even know I was gone? That's prob a big issue. Many of my digital friends, like all those dozens of prospective Match dates waiting in my inbox, wouldn't even know I was dead.

Enter Digital Plot. Digital Plot would enable you to carry out a very specific set of intructions to be carried out for your digital world when you pass.

So, here's how it would work... You sign up and give us all your respective passwords..the keys to your kingdom. For each place, you tell us what to do. Maybe you want a mass email to go out to all your gmail contacts, one that you write up and store at Digital Plot. Maybe it points people to your blog, where you've instructed us to post a YouTube video that you prerecorded and saved privately via our site.

Or maybe you want the whole thing slashed and burned...immediate termination of all your digital content.

Or an archive of it to be stored on CD/DVD and mailed to your friends.

Or maybe you just want something simple...send my universal password to my friend by email and let the digital executor carry out my wishes.

The business model would work the same was as a cemetery actually...its just like an investment fund. You pay us a discounted amount of the money we'll need to carry out your wishes in perpetuity, like maintaining your blog and we make money by investing those funds hoping that you don't die anytime soon.

Or pay us over time... I'd pay a couple of dollars a month to ensure that my carefully constructed digital persona is taken care of as per my wishes forever. As people get more and more serious about their digital selves, the more and more they're going to be unsatisfied with the idea of their blog just dying on the vine with them and eventually getting eaten alive by comment spam.

We could even maintain a memorial for you on Second Life... if you so desire.

Creepy? Maybe? Morbid? Perhaps...but I guarantee you this becomes a service one day.

Is MySpace a content business? They don't create, for their noncommercial users, any blog posts, photos, videos, backgrounds, etc. When you look at your friend's page, you're looking at their creations, their aggregations, mashups, links and friend connections.

So I guess that makes them a platform, right?

So what is Typepad? Or Wordpress? Platforms, too?

No, there's something fundamentally different about what you're seeing in MySpace, and moreover why you're seeing it, that makes it more than just a CMS. MySpace, because of its easy onramp for bands and autoplaying of music set a tone for what the site would be. Even over and above other social networks, this content influences the experience...it provides a context without being a pure content company.

Its not even just the features, because, when it comes down to it, social networks, blog platforms, photo sharing sites...they all basically have the same respective features.

But a little bit of content here and there provides contextn Lots of things can provide context...initial users, featured examples of usage, even advertisers, or just marketing. I mean, is there any reason why my a female friend of mine couldn't use SuicideGirls page to post "in action" softball photos or her and her athletic friends. Technically, its just a CMS, right?

A little starter content, the right initial userbase and marketing verbiage go a long way, and I think we often mistake these nudges and examples as the makings of content businesses, when all they do is provide context for user participation.

MySpace, Sugar Publishing, outside.in, SuicideGirls. DeviantArt, Takkle...they're all good examples of context companies that use a little bit of editing, content, marketing, look and feel...all things that are really difficult to quantify or explain to an investor... to provide shaping guidence for what should go on their sites.

The key is knowing how much content you need to grease the wheels with before you accidently become a content company yourself.