Here's a thought exercise:

Why doesn't someone build, as an app, a Facebook ad network.

Facebook sells advertising that puts ads on our pages and in our newsfeeds.   Could you build an ad app that people would ad that could become like AdSense for Facebook (or, in fact, an actual AdSense for Facebook app).  Conceivably, it could use some of the data of the signed in user to tip off the engine to get more relevent results, and you could pay the person who added the app.  Imagine that, an advertising network that never has to pay a dime for the platform itself...  you wouldn't even need to cut Facebook in.

Of course, there would be downsides.   People might not like you selling stuff within their feeds and bringing a commercial feel to a social environment, so they may turn you off in their feeds... or join you and ad the app themselves so they can make money, too.

I would imagine that if such a thing was successful, Facebook would adjust its policy on ads in apps.

Avi told me last night about the Helio Ocean and I checked it out:

So 500 daytime minutes, which is all I need, will cost me $65 a month.

Other features:

• Slideout keyboard (Two thumbs up!)
• Unlimited texts
• Integrated AIM instant messaging
• Integrated Gmail and (coming soon) Outlook Exchange sync (we'll see how coming soon this is, that's important for me)

Does anyone have this phone yet??   This all seems too good to be true.   

If there was ever a poster app for Web 2.0 tools you need to use to really understand, Twitter would be it.  On the surface, it's quite easy for someone to look at it and go, "It's a bunch of people incessantly blabbering  on about meaningless crap."  Fred made a great point at lunch today that you could just as well say that about instant messengers, but obviously IM clients represent some of the most valuable and sticky applications users have on their desktops.

Past the incessant microupdates, though, which I, of course, take part in, there's  much more potential here.   If anything, Twitter's biggest challenge to success may be in defining exactly what it wants to be when it grows up and what customers it wants to serve.  And, of course, its fun and interesting for us bloggers to ponder such theoretical exercises.

Right now, very much like del.icio.us at the time of its funding.  It has a lot of passionate users, people are building mashups and lightweight apps on top of it, and it has the potential to be a lot of different things.  These outcomes don't have to be mutually exclusive, but it will certainly be interesting to see how Twitter brands itself over time, builds features, and what segments of the population it actively goes after.   In fact, who the service targets will likely influence what it becomes, and vice versa, so in some sense, defining its audience is largely an exercise in self-definition.

There are a few groups, applications, instantiations, versions, etc. of Twitter that I think could gain a lot of traction that make for interesting thought experiments:

1. LiveJournal & other Social Networks:  I picked out LiveJournal because it's a perfect fit.  Each  blogs is read by only a small handful of readers--friends of the LJer.  Providing a tool by which they could continue to communicate off the site could help increase loyalty and social interaction to a site that already excels in those areas, but would probably like to extend its reach.  Plus, LJ already has a "status" that is a widely used part of the site.  It would be only natural to want to allow LJers to publish this status or blog updates across the web, IMs, and mobile.  Facebook should be powering its status through Twitter as well.  One thing that both of these sites do quite well is promote communication, and I think the keys to their future are implementing features that help maintain the communicative aspects of social networking.  Sites like MySpace aren't going to survive if its just about friend adding and profile browsing.  Key Feature: Privacy.  Social networks need robust privacy features and so do the apps that build on them.  Most LJ blogs are closed and making sure they've simplified and completely nailed the privacy features would be key to adoption.  Key Business Point:  Will SNS realize that enabling more user communication is key to user engagement and loyalty or will they look for immediate paths to monetization?  Plus
2. Conference Attendees:  SXSW really nailed it for me.  With various possible tracks and a constantly ebbing and flowing swirl of closely proximated people, Twitter proved to be the perfect conference app.  People freely gave out their Twitter screenames knowing that they could always leave or block those people later on, lowering the bar for mobile communication.  If you're running a big conference, you should be using Twitter to be the digital hallway, and as we all know, hallways are often the best parts of conferences.  Key Feature: Stats, Directories, and Co-Registration.  Conference producers would definitely look for ways to get more of their audience on this, and to provide them with enough information to message each other.  Streamlining the registration process so that you can sign up for Twitter or publicize your account when registering for the conference would be key.  This way, they could publish your screename in attendee directories and make it easier for key networking contacts to find you.   In addition, they would probably die for a management view of this app where they could see who the "talkers" were, who they were talking to, connections over time, conference feedback, etc.   Key Business Point:  What does the management tool look like and could you sell it?
3. Corporate Twitter: We have an intra-office e-mail address that blasts messages to everyone that routinely gets abused by reply-alls that I wish I could unsubscribe to.  On top of that, there's often the need to message people through phones in short form when you don't know exactly where you are.  Putting a smart phone seems like overkill for this and not everyone necessarily wants to give their cell number out to the whole office.  Twitter could be a great cross-platform IRC channel for small to midsize offices, and even part of an office's emergency management plans, with its capacity to blast messages out to a large group of mobile users.  Key Feature: Privacy and monitoring.  Corporate IM applications have needed to not only provide extra levels of security and privacy, but also monitoring of what gets discussed.  Twitter would likely have to do the same, lest anyone Twitter corporate secrets.   Key Business Point:  How corporate would it be?  Perhaps just a lightweight app more geared towards small businesses would be a better start, rather than building a heavy locked down version behind the firewall.
4. Content subscription portal:  There have been lots of fake celebs popping up on Twitter...   Steven Wright, Christopher Walken, John Edwards... (oh, wait.. Edwards is real, right?).  Adding a celeb or a business to get a stream of content from them makes so much more sense than just being their friend via a profile.  It's only a matter of time before bands, movies, comedians, etc. make Twitter a standard part of their communication with fans.  Plus, I wouldn't mind a Weather Channel Twitter update on Brooklyn weather conditions, score changes for the Mets, and Hudson River water temps.  Key Feature: Spam prevention.  Twitter will have to build in some limitations on how often 3rd party content providers can blast out updates, what types of messages are allowed, etc., just in case marketers get overzealous.   Key Business Point:  There was a land grab on Twitter names when they opened up their API and they may need to boot some squatters, but this is likely to come to pass and I'm sure it will be a revenue opportunity for them.  The question is what is a Twitter subscriber worth?
5. Gaming:  I'm surprised that people haven't built large scale games out of Twitter.  (Sounds like a Jane project...)  Twitter could blur the line between participants and lurkers, since your public twits related to the game could enable others to follow along and perhaps jump in with answers, route advice for location based games, etc.  Imagine adding a game "friend" one day and just knowing that, sometime over the next week, you're going to get instructions for a game.  Key Feature: Spam prevention.  Twitter will have to build in some limitations on how often 3rd party content providers can blast out updates, what types of messages are allowed, etc., just in case marketers get overzealous.   Key Business Point:  There's big advergaming potential here, and the great thing about Twitter is that it acts like a portal.  You don't have to remember some special shortcode for a mobile game... everything is based on 40404.  Gaming and mobile contests can be built in a very social way with Twitter and enable lower barriers to entry and discovery.

What else could Twitter be?  Where is it's greatest potential?

A lot of people ask me about my VC experience and want to know the secret to getting into the VC world.  Its a pertinent question, especially if you're in NYC.  If you've been paying attention, my VC successor will probably reach the  halfway point in his stint this year, and if you wait until that spot actually opens up to position yourself, well, you'll probably be too late.

As an analyst, you can be useful at pretty much only three things: communication, sourcing, and analysis.  The great thing for VC wannabes is that these are all things that you can do now, before a job even comes up.  There's nothing stopping you from putting forth your analysis of a new startup, or tipping VCs off to potential deals today, even when you're not at a firm. 

Many students have the misconception that, as an analyst, you're going to be put in front of a big stack of business plans and your filtering skill is what's going to make you the next Mike Moritz.  Guess again.  VCs hustle hard to track down deals and they expect everyone in the shop to be bringing deals to the table, because you should be in the flow of interesting things going on.

But, all this can be a lot of handwaving unless you have specific, applicable action items, and since the web loves top ten lists:

1) Make a digital home for yourself.

If I haven't beat this to death already, creating a digital presence, preferably through a blog, gives people you connect with a landing page.  It is the center of operations for all your online networking and a place for people to assess what you're all about, what you're thinking, etc--the equivalent of  hoisting a sail on a windy day.  No presence, no sail.

2) Know your community calendar... attend.

As a VC, you want to meet innovators, but the innovators are already meeting... in Meetups and Co-working groups, speaking events, and usergroups.  (nextNY, for example,if you're into tech in NYC) They'll be a lot more accepting to you if the first time you meet them isn't when you're trying to vulture around for something to shove money into.  Plus, you need to get out there and in the flow to keep up with what's going on. 

3) Be passionate for the product...no matter what it is.

Frankly, I don't know how anyone could be a VC analyst and not be passionate about the products they're looking to invest in.  If you're doing web services, and you're not a user, you're just never going to get it.  Why do people use Twitter?  Why is Facebook better than MySpace?  These are things you're just not going to understand if you're not a real user. 

4) Be an innovation leader in your own world.

You don't have to be a former entrepreneur, but being generally entrepreneurial and an innovator helps.  Did you lead the investment or entrepreneurship club at your college?  No?  Why not?   There wasn't one?   BUZZ  Wrong answer.  You should have started it.

5) Be selfless with your time for startups.

One of the most valuable thing you can do with your time as analyst is just talk to a lot of startups...get a sense of what you like and what you don't, best practices, good teams vs. weak teams, etc.   And startups are often looking for feedback, beta testers, ideas...   the more you make yourself available, the more you will learn and generally be seen as a useful person to talk to.  Go help a startup with their marketing plan.

6) Ignore the hype.

It's not just about e-mailing the companies you find on TechCrunch.   Just because it doesn't have AJAX doesn't mean it won't be worth billions one day.  Remember that the whole world doesn't necessarily blog and some startups can't even be found online yet because they're still in stealth.  You need to cut through the buzz and make your own decisions.

7) Teach.

You will never have a clearer understanding of how something works until you attempt to teach it to someone else, which requires you to make some semblance of sense of your subject.  Offer to teach at your high school or the Learning Annex or anything...  Convince grandma to join Facebook.  It will be a sobering experience and will remind you that not everyone gets RSS and some people don't see the value of being social and out there.  It's those people that startup success is built on.  Win the middle.

8) Be social and have a personality.

If you're going to be an involved community member, people need to actually like hanging out with you.  This is where those countless hours in college bars should have taught you something.  I know plenty of people who succeed because of their great personalities more so than any other reason.  It's not hard to be nice and have a little fun... try it.

9) Build relationships with VCs..not just for stock information interviews.

Right now, you can go do a report on a hot new space or a review of a product and send it to a VC (or tag it for them).   If you really want in to this space, why wouldn't you?   How about hanging around their blog or showing up at the same events?   VC's don't live in a bubble.  Their job dictates that they need to be "out there" and that's where you should be, too.   It always blew my mind when I was at USV how many people sent biz plans to info@unionsquareventuers (dot) com, when we were so out there with our digital presence. 

10) Know your place.

You are not a partner.  You're an analyst.. or you want to be.  There are a lot of people with a lot more experience than you who have seem this all before.  Respect experience.  Don't trash a startup, because, for all you know, the entrepreneur is the VC's best friend from Stanford or they're currently in talks for funding now.  The best thing you can do sometimes is listen.  Listen to what VCs and entrepreneurs are saying on blogs and at conferences and take it all in before you go position yourself as the greatest thing since sliced bread....especially since a large part of your job will be listening and asking smart questions.

So, the next time I hear from someone via LinkedIn or e-mail who wants to hear about my VC experience, I fully expect that they already go to Tech Meetups, have joined nextNY if they are in NYC, use all this stuff passionately, etc....   That's a good first step.

A few people have made attempts at mirroring the nextNY concept in other geographies and I think it's a fantastic idea.

Nathaniel McNamara and Jason Baptiste are down in Miami attempting to bring together people
interested in technology, new media, and entrepreneurship together in a social setting.  If you're down in Florida, you should make a point of connecting with these two guys in their attempt to help strengthen the community of innovators down there.  The "next" concept takes a lot of community interest, passion, and involvement and nextNY has been a fantastic way to connect with others in the space.  Frankly, its brought a lot of people out of the woodwork that I didn't know were there.

Check out the event next Thursday night, June 14th via Facebook or Meetup.

Please forward to Florida startups and innovators...

Some unfiltered thoughts that bubbled up at the gym this morning:

• Anyone who has any interest in the future of NYC as an innovation center recognizes the importance of education--not just at the University level, but in high schools and elementary schools as well.  We can't just be a town that attracts smart people from elsewhere to educate them in technology... we need to foster the seeds of technology innovation from a very young age. 
• Couple that with the idea that internet, mobile,  and digital media related companies want better inroads into younger generations, for not just marketing, but for feedback and ideas.
• High school kids need jobs... and ideally more interesting jobs than working at McDonald's.

So, what about some kind of a program whereby startups and large companies alike targeting the high school/college audience engages the schools in an educational manner, in terms of talking about the technology, the business, product management, etc. of their products, and then "hires" these students for both feedback and marketing purposes during the summers.  So, maybe during the year, they do a six week program about all the aspects of their service, and then the students spend the summer providing feedback, helping to market, etc.

Is there anything out there like this?

Evan mentions it in this post.

Thanks, Chris!

Gizmoz new offering makes me feel good about some of our Voki features.  Yup, I now have another avatar on my sidebar...   a photorealistic 3D avatar created from a photo.  You can even comment on a Gizmoz.  Commenting on an avatar?  Really... wow, I wonder where they got that?  Still, kudos for adding that feature after the Voki launch.  I also like the way they did it without a popup.  We'll have to add that ourselves.

Still, I have to ask... what do people think about photorealistic avatars?   Frankly, I think they're a little creepy.  We've added them as part of the Sitepal service, but I've gone from using my custom drawn one, to a cartoon one, to one that's even more cartoony?  I love my little bigheaded cartoon Voki guy and I think that one of the best parts of an avatar is that it's a representation of you... not actually you.  We have this debate internally a lot and I've never been a big fan of 3-D photo conversion and am just fine sticking to my flat little 2D avatars.

PS...   New commentary on StumbleUpon and Mahalo at Walken's site.

Blogging is all about personality, right?  Getting yourself out there with your own unique voice in the world...   

...but in the Web 2.0 ecosphere, there's a lot of crowd following.  Everyone posts about the same thing and says the same stuff.

Until now...

I just discovered a gem of a blog that you absolutely have to take a look at.   Who knew that the Continental had a moment to put down the cowbell and talk social media?

That's right, it's Christopher Walken covering Web 2.0.  (Please feel free to tag and digg liberally as a favor to the creator...  ;)   )

I am negotiated lunches.

I am softball invites.  I am blog reading clickthroughs.  I am del.icio.us saves.   

I am multiple daily e-mails to Mere.  I am last.fm plays. 

I am IM. 

I am blog posts.  I am book purchases.  I am Fresh Direct orders.  I am tech spec changes tracked.  I am live fantasy baseball updates. 

I am boathouse photos.  I am biking times.  I am trailers watched.  I am phonecalls to Nana.

I am nextNY join requests.  I am EZ Pass withdrawls.  I am sunny forecasts. 

I am concert tickets by e-mail.  I am Regis Business Network listserv responses.  I am NYSC ID scans.  I am paycheck deposits and mileage card purchases. 

I am electric bills.  I am bits transferred. 

I am a feed.

1)  What Accel did by investing in Facebook was the equivalent of spending $100 on a old painting at a yardsale that later appraised on Antique Roadshow for $5000.    That was BEFORE the creation of this developer network.  The way they've built this thing is like coming home and discovering that, hidden in the frame of your old painting is one of ten known original copies of the Declaration of Independence.

What I'm saying is that, a few years ago, Accel invested a lot of money in a very hot social networking property.  However, there's no way in hell, and no way that anyone could really convince me, that they foresaw Facebook's eventual prominence in the social application ecosphere as the OS.   I'm sure they just saw pageviews and signups and all sorts of nice charts with hockey sticks on them and wanted to be a part of that.  Now, maybe this is what Mark Zuckerberg had in his head... that's a possibility... I don't know the guy, but I seriously doubt he pitched the social OS concept to them before anyone really even gave any thought to what that meant.

2)  If Microsoft wanted to spent that $6 billion of agency M&A money more wisely, they would have bought their way into the web OS by buying Facebook for half that.   Google, Adobe... someone who wants to be in that layer should seriously consider throwing $3-5 billion their way.

Actually, to be honest, I think the acquirer that makes the most sense is Amazon.  Amazon store+S3+Facebook would mean that you have a place to host your app, spread your app, ways to sell stuff in a whitelabeled way through your app, and a social network to integrate into a "Your friends bought this" concept.  Imagine how powerful it would be if when I buy stuff, all my friends get notified.

Jeff Bezos... are you listening?  Buy Facebook!

It would be hard for me to say anything that hasn't been said about Facebook's new developer platform.

So, just a few thoughts:

• If you are any kind of direct to consumer application developer, developing for Facebook needs to become a priority... RIGHT NOW.
• Facebook Widgets, or whatever you want to call them, work because they add in what most web widgets lack... broadcast.  All that stuff sitting in my sidebar, it isn't any good to anyone if it doesn't get "in the feed"...   Now, what feed, whose feed, where, how, etc...  those are great questions, but the idea of getting in the flow of social data is incredibly important.
• I wonder if when Facebook came up with the NewsFeed, they realized how important it would be to their application platform.  Just think about it... when I pick up my Twitter app for Facebook, now all my mainstream friends (all the ones who don't know how or where to subscribe to my RSS feed) can see it, grab it, and learn how it works.  Facebook basically integrated RSS into their platform in a social way and now they're using it to fuel the spread and functionality of their apps.  Incredible.

Let's think about a comparison between MySpace and Facebook and how they approached third party  applications in their environment:

• MySpace allowed you to paste a piece of HTML code onto a page.  That's it.  No hooks into the service.  No way to discover new widgets other than random browsing.  Then, they tied one hand behind the back of their apps by disabling linking through Flash.  On top of that, they made a big stink when others tried to monetize their creations, banned some folks, etc.  There's no developer network.  No notifications.  No nothing.
• Facebook is encouraging development.  It is giving apps hooks right into Facebook, enabling the pulling of various parts of my profile, and publishing right back into that profile and publishing notifications and various application output to friends.  They even allow publishers of services competitive to Facebook features, like Twitter.  There's a developer site, documentation, rules, etc.   

Guess which one is the future of web based social application development and which one isn't.

I'll give you a hint, the future of app development rightly turned down a billion dollars for their company.

Brilliant.  Anyone know who architected this?  I'm so impressed.  I want to pick that person's brain.

I get pitched all the time.  Please link to me.  Please read my book.  Please read my client's book.  Please use my service.

And you know what, most of 'em are bad... like, really bad.   Usually, I try to give them advice on how to pitch.

Once I got a pitch that started with:

"I've just begun to get acquainted with your terrific website, thisisgoingtobebig.com, and thoroughly enjoy reading it."

To be honest, I don't even think my site is terrific.  I think I'm a terrific guy, but this site is kind of crap.  I mean, look at all these silly widgets on the side... and theme?  What's the theme?  It's a snarky Web 2.0 and kayaking blog... which goes together like peanut butter and eggs.   So, don't tell me it's a good site, b/c I know you've never read it.

BUT... that's totally ok.  You're just doing your job.  So I responded by e-mail with a story on a book that I bought b/c a blogger recommended it:

"... the web and the tech community is such a small world that isn't hard to break into at all... and so when something comes in from completely outside of my circle, it just goes in a big pile of unfiltered stuff that I'll look at later. So, this will probably come off as snarky, but I really don't mean it that way at all...  Just trying to be honest and give you my honest reaction."

And then, I invited the pitcher in question to a nextNY event.  In other words, I engaged her like an actual person... you know, the way that we bloggers say we want to be treated.   

"Let's talk more about it more Wednesday.  Again...  just trying to be honest and helpful...  not meaning to bite your head off at all."

I got another one the other day...  one that I responded to in a similar manner:

"This whole blast e-mail in a can thing wasn't very "Next Big Thing". A tag for me in del.icio.us or a blog comment on my blog or a Twitter or a Facebook or MySpace add or just about anything else would have been a lot more appropriate. "

The person pitching responded in a very polite way:

"Thanks so much for checking out the site, even if my email rubbed you the wrong way... ...thanks for the suggestions, feedback is ALWAYS appreciated."

Not all the bloggers she wrote to where so friendly.

Some people took to their little soapboxes and called her out:

Blah blah blah blah silly little marketing person we know more than you blah blah.

The only person who seemed to recognize that Alison was just trying to do her job was this blogger, Ed Schipul:

""Ya, I took the email link bait. From a Fleishman-Hillard blogger outreach email from Allison Mooney...I still get my daily TrendCentral Intelligence Report, but I welcome new relevant content. Just please please please be sure it is relevant."

Pretty constructive, I'd say.  He knew what he was getting.

Here's the thing that's easy to forget in the blog world... blogs, e-mails, tags, IM, are made out of PEOPLE.   Real people who try to do a good job and have feelings and friends and all sorts of stuff.  Do you know how I know that in this case?

Because, as it turns out, Allison is a real person.  As it turns out, she was at nextMadisonAve, nextNY's discussion of the future of digital advertising and she just wrote about it in the blog she was pitching in her e-mail.  So, she does participate in the community... and she wasn't doing someone else's PR dirtywork... she was actually pitching the blog that she writes for.  Social media kudos for being a part of nextNY and pitching your own stuff.  It also turns out we know more than a few local NYers in common and I found that out because I actually approached her like a real human.

Did her approach need a little work?  Sure?  Do most of our own approaches to social media need work?  Absolutely.  Does we need to tear someone a new one in public by name?  I don't think so.

I mean, what if she got fired for her pitch gone awry?  Is that what these bloggers wanted to see?  Would they have felt bad if she did?

I can't say that I'm necessarily blameless in the snarky callouts department, but the next time you want to call someone out like this, you might consider the following:

1. Respond directly to them by e-mail first, because that's the way they contacted you.  No reason to elevate.  When someone blogs something you don't like, it's more appropriate to blog about them, but keep the response to the medium it came in.
2. What is the big picture of how I should judge this person?  Do they participate in the community in other ways?  In Allison's case, she does... she's a blogger, a nextNYer, Flickr user, etc, etc...not someone from the "outside" who needs to be taught a lesson.
3. Is there added value to calling them out by name?  Can you pull out useful pitch lessons from an e-mail without needing to embarrass someone?
4. What position is this person in?  Are they a VP of such and such... a prominent thought leader that makes their living by headlining conferences, etc. or just a worker bee trying to make their way up the chain who could do without you kicking them in the head because you happen to be three rungs higher up the ladder?
5. Who the hell do I think I am?  This is something I probably don't ask myself enough and frankly, few bloggers do.  Saying stuff like, "I've been working in the social media space since 2004" is a good indicator of the need to ask this question more often.  Wow, 2004, huh?  That was like, even before YouTube existed.  Jeez, what was it like back then?  Did you have electricity?

Seeing Caroline on TV makes me feel like we're grownups.

People on the news are supposed to be adults...  wait, damnit... we're adults!  Fuck!  When did that happen?

Man, does this pain me to do, but I just put up a Simply Hired powered "Job-a-matic" job board called "This is going to be HIRED."   Obviously, having worked for Union Square Ventures during the time of the Indeed funding, I was pretty conflicted about this.

I've wanted useful job tools on this blog for a while, but something more substantial than a sidebar widget.  With this Job-a-matic job board, I can have a whole board at my domain where I can even sell my own jobs automatically.  That's right, for $5 a week, you can have a prominently placed job on my job board.

Is it a good value?

Nope.

In fact, I'd be surprised if this job board gets any traffic whatsoever.   In fact, Oddcast's personal experience with blogger boards has been relatively poor.  Very few hits when we post to major tech blogger boards.   

It's interesting, because, in my opinion, Simply Hired has done a better job in knocking down big names for job distribution...  MySpace, Typepad, Feedburner...    but yet they lag behind in traffic to Indeed.  Why?

I think it's because of the location and implementation.  I just don't think your favorite tech blog or social network is necessarily where you go to look for jobs.  You go to the best and most comprehensive job search sites, and that, to me, is what Indeed has become. 

And, even if you did get jobs from these random places, it needs to be prominently placed.  While its neat to have a job board on my site, and I'll likely leave it there, I just don't see most of my traffic, which is RSS based, ever thinking to visit it.  What I need is a better way to put what I think are interesting opportunities for my audience right in my posts.  That's something I would integrate immediately, no matter who the provider.

As for the Job-a-matic... it was great because it was so easy, but not so great because it doesn't quite work like a distributed version of Simply Hired.  I couldn't autosave a job search, b/c it isn't really their job search tool.  It's just a list.  I'm not sure why they did this, but that really takes down the usefulness of the tool.  Also, while NYC-only was available as a filter for users, it wasn't the default, which, for this blog, it should be.

Anyhoo, that's not the only widget update I made.  Last.fm just came out with some cool new flash ones that allow you to play snippets of the songs I listen to, and my personal radio station.  I also added a Meetup.com widget for the NY Tech Meetups.

Gone is the co.comment widget.  Co.comment was a fantastic idea, tracking my comments across the web and helping me pull them back, but they never really figured out a great way to make this useful to me or my audience. 

Any other suggestions on helping me satisfy my widget cravings?

So here are some meandering thoughts about the current state of the NY Angel market that I don't have the time or the intellectual capacity to synthesize into a coherent thesis/essay:

• People, including myself, say that there is an angel funding gap in NYC.  The reason why is that they cannot readily identify very many firms or individuals who are known to do angel investing.
• At the same time, I don't know of any really fantastic startup companies in NYC who are struggling to get angel money raised.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I know of several companies who are raising or have raised significant angel capital just through their own network or introductions.  Many of the investors have been people who do not usually do angel investing or at least don't have a shingle out to do so.   So, angel gap or no?
• If there was an angel gap, how best to fill it?  Early stage firms could go earlier.  A USV incubator perhaps, a la what Charles River is doing? 
• How about banding groups of angels together in a fund or group?
• What about other types of incubators?  Corporate?  CBS Interactive incubator? 
• Well, we know from the last go around that anyone who doesn't have a larger fund who isn't 100% in the main business of venture investing over the long term are the first ones to get wiped off the face of the earth in a bubble...  does that make them inherently bad structures or just more risky?
• There's a lot of money in NYC that isn't connected to the entrepreneur community...  hedge fund and banking money.  Would it be wise for someone to package up $5-10 million of that to do seed stage financing at 50-250k a pop?  Who should do such a thing?  Isn't a small investor like this going to get crushed in latter rounds because they don't have the money to maintain ownership positions?  That brings us back to the USV incubator idea... and also brings us back to the "Why would USV be interested in entrepreneurs who aren't savvy enough to raise 100k on their own?"
• Is "professional" angel investing, i.e. someone setting up a smaller fund to invest in people not necessarily known beforehand, adverse selection?  If an entrepreneur has never been successful before and isn't connected to enough powerful industry people with a compelling enough product to get backing from community insiders, what are the chances they'll be able to build a successful company?  Same thing with incubators.  If you can't find a space to build your business, how are you ever going to actually build a business?

So, here's a question...

NYC has a lot of money floating around...  lots of hedge fund and banking bonuses... but little of that ever finds it's way into burgeoning startups. 

The problem as I see it.. or at least as I think I'm seeing it, is a connection and to some extent a filtering problem.  The money doesn't know how to find the right startups, nor are they immersed enough in the tech to really evaluate it in an intelligent manner.

So, I often wonder if it wouldn't be valuable for someone to come along with a $10 million fund in NYC to do 20-40 deals of 250-500k each

Girls Gone Wild is now Twittering... .and yes, I added them as a friend.

Did you know that today was Abstinence Day?

Yeah, no kidding.

Well, to celebrate, we came up with a contest for Voki.

Basically, you go to Voki, create an account, then send your sexiest avatar over to contests@accounts.voki.com.

Here are some ideas for the kind of thing we're looking for:

1. Describe your steamiest encounter... (or imagined encounter, for those of you who are waiting for wedding bells)
2. Long distance love?  Send us a note for them that will help pass the time until your next encounter.
3. Tell us your sexual fantasy.
4. Fake an orgasm...or...don't fake it!  (Does abstaining pertain to when you're on by yourself in front of a computer?)
5. Tell us about your secret sex crush!

Yeah, this is the kind of thing where if it gets 20,000 new users, it's brilliant... or if you get fired, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

But sex sells, right?

In a little over a week of our Alpha launch, Voki had 1665 non-Oddcast employed users this morning.

How's that for transparency?

Now Mayka, the intern from Meez, will know, and you'll see her little cartoon head appear in my MyBlogLog and she'll go take that stat back to the management of one of our competitors.  Hey, at least they participate in the social web and use their own product.

Anyway, so what if they know?  So what if you all know?

Registered users are an absolutely meaningless number and in the early going of a product, I think most companies play it way too close to the vest with this sort of stuff.

For example, our goal is 350,000 registered users by the end of the year.  Is there anything different that we're doing to try to get to 350,000 that we wouldn't do if we were trying for a million?  No, absolutely not.  We'd love a million.   We'd love ten million.  In fact, we're actually shooting for 350 million, but the bottleneck there is the pain we would experience upon extracting these numbers from our own business ends. 

The reality is, you don't really know how many users you're going to get, but you just want to pay very close attention to who is signing up, how they find out about it, and what they're doing with it, and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly.

For example, I've noticed a lot of users posting Voki in their MySpace blogs as a way to speak to their users, rather than as one of 100 widgets on their profile page.  (Makes sense... since your Voki can talk, as opposed to just thrash in silence, crowd surf in silence, or ride a bicycle in circles in silence.)   Is this better or worse?  Certainly the blogs get less traffic, but in terms of engagement and placement, very rarely do you see many widgets posted in blogs at all, and when your friends subscribe and see a new post, they get notified right away and will come visit.  So, it's actually not such a bad place to be, but of course, we'd like to see Voki on the profile as well, too.

As for the number itself, one might think that's on the low side.  We're used to seeing big launches that lots of people buzz about because of a TechCrunch feature... and since TechCrunch has 350k subscribers, having a little over 1500 after a week of alpha seems sort of low, no?  Actually, no...   because TechCrunch registrations are often a blip...  noise generated by a highly engaged and curious audience that has 180 other widgets to play with.   We're happy to never get mentioned on TechCrunch because those users aren't by any stretch of our imagination our target audience.   I don't know any 15 year old girls with 600 friends in MySpace who develop in AJAX and read TechCrunch religiously.   (Not to mention the fact that I already know they like Gizmoz better because of their technology.  Me personally, I'd rather my avatar platform not have terrorist characters with guns and ski masks available for use.  I don't exactly find that sort of thing amusing.  Gagz!)

When I look at these e-mail addresses of users, I'm really happy with the 1500 we have, because we've got mostly "imaprettygurl85@domain.com" and "suchandsuch@college.edu"...   On the surface, definitely the audience we want to hit.

Plus, it all depends on how you're marketing.  We're working on little bugs and site improvements here and there...  getting feedback from the early adopters, etc. 

Growth is an interesting thing.  So, we need about 24% weekly growth to hit our target... but obviously, its a lot harder to go from 100 to 124 than it is to go from 100,000 to 124,000, right?

Well, let's think about that actually.  Sure, I could power my way to another 24 users with some e-mails to friends and of course that doesn't scale.   However, that's not a I'm likely to get repeat, sticky usage.  You might thing that it would be hard to add on another 24,000 users, but when you already have a base of 100,000, some good marketing to your users, some contests, viral feature improvements, etc, can be very powerful.... not to mention the fact that new people are that much more likely to have seen Voki elsewhere, maybe multiple times, and have a strong desire to get one because their friends are using it.  There's a tipping point in there somewhere, buried among all the network effects. 

Plus, we never really got into the idea of what being a user means.   I mean, I've created a WeeMee and posted him to my blog, and that's all I've done.  I don't think I've changed him since I first made him.  Do I count?  It's also getting lots of pageviews everyday, so its not like I have a totally stale account.  It would be really interesting to see how I get counted in their user numbers.

So, we have a lot of work to do to identify key metrics.  How to we compare a posted Voki out on the web to one send as a message via e-mail?  What do we want people doing?  Just recording new audios?  Messing with characters?  Is a Voki created with our Text to Speech engine inherently less valuable than a Voki with a real voice?

Lots of questions, lots of Voki out there, lots more still to go...   but one thing's for sure... headline numbers don't mean a damn thing.

I mean, Zwinky has like 4 million plus registered users by now, I think...  but how many of them still use it versus how many can't figure out how to uninstall the Ask.com toolbar that comes with it? 

Seen those commercials yet?  Get Zwinky!  Get Zwinky!  Get Zwinky!  It's enough to make me want to throw the TV out the window.