The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

Path 101 acquisitions, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Firesale at a nearby startup. We bought some computers at 15 a piece to add to our crawling infrastructure... The cart we just found on the sidewalk.

Sometimes, it takes you longer to realize things about your own business--especially somewhat obvious (in hindsight) business analogies.

I was thinking about Mint.com, the personal finance site, and I never realized how similar our goals are at Path 101.

Mint is building a suite of free tools to help manage a mainstream problem that effects everyone--in their case, managing your budget.  Their target audiance?  What about... everyone who makes money?  Spends money?  Wants more money?  It's a pretty huge potential audience and we feel the same way about our career guidance site.  Path 101 is targeted at anyone who works and wants to figure out what's next.

Now, the argument could be made that not a lot of people who make money actually manage their money well, which is what I thought initially about Mint.  However, Mint is making their tools so easy that they're not just converting the beancounters, they're helping people who have never ever kept a budget before--introducing people to the concept of budging and personal financial management.  We want to do the same for careers.  Thinking about your career can be an intimidating thing and we want to shed some light on the process and make it easier. 

Mint.com makes it easy for you to upload your financial data to the system, but moreover they give you a compelling reason to--to get recommendations and gain insight into your budget, the same way we want someone to get value from uploading their resume and other information.

This enables Mint to gain a tremendous information advantage from a business standpoint.  By working hand in hand with their users in managing their finances, they are the best positioned to broker offers from people who want to access those users.  That's ultimately where we want to be with Path 101.  By getting to know our users better, because we helped them manage their career, we'll ultimately be the best place to broker recruiter and employer access--particularly given that we'll know so much more about each user.

They're also using the network effects of having all that user data to improve the product.  The more Mint users there are, the more insight they get into trends and norms, which can, in turn, be presented back to the user in a useful, comparitive way.

It's a business and product model that no doubt works in other areas, too, but I feel like Mint is a particularly relevent comparison given the size of the potential market, the importance of this aspect of someone's lifestyle, and the focus on data.

Why is does the black guy have a giraffe neck?, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

No one else does...

I wrote a post about losing our family dog that now has nearly 100 comments on it...mostly dead dog stories.

Listen to this story...

"well i had a dog in kindgarden threw 4th grade and it was hit by a car in those grades i didnt have any friends and it was my only friend i would talk to her i would pet her for hours she was my only and best friend i loved her dearly the day i was told she died i cried for months but right after she died i made my human best friend and then other and now im 13 and have alot of friends and im thinking she died for a reason. R.I.P buttercup"

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

I found this neat little viral app, When did you join Twitter?

Apparently, I joined on February 12, 2007... and then about a month later, I totally got it.

This is a note I wrote to Fred Wilson... note the date:

From: Charlie O'Donnell
To: Fred Wilson
Sent: Fri Mar 09 10:44:03 2007
Subject: Do you twitter?

You should check it out... I didn't get it at first, but now that there's a group going to sxsw, I get it. Its like an OS for sms. I'd never text all the people I'm texting now...but its a really seemless way to text groups and inidividuals at the same time.

It needs to be packaged for the MySpace gen better, and also marketed to groups and conferences. I'm connected to the sxsw group and they randomly connected me to two other twitter people in a 3 person group. It can solve the prob of walking into a conf and not knowing who the heck to meet or talk to first.

What's even better...    check this out:

So basically, what we can take from this is that it takes Fred three days to act on e-mails and four months to invest. 

1) Great hiring is partly function of how many people you put into the top of the funnel.  You won't put extra pressure on yourself to hire anyone you don't feel great about, because you know you'll see more, and it will help you get a good sense of what you're looking for.

2) Take feature suggestions out of the hands of executives.  Instead, make problem/opportunity identification their job and let the process figure out the solutions through testing and data.

3) Slankets are awesome.  Path 101 got Gary Clegg at The Slanket to hook up every single SocialFoo attendee with a Slanket.  We thought it would be appropriate because it gets cold at night in Sebastopol, plus, as you can see, Slankets are an important part of the social graph:

4) At the end of the day, the most successful people are those that are dedicated to building really great stuff, not the people who worry too much about beating the competition--collaboration FTW!

5) Building a few deep connections with people is better than trying to network at scale.  This is the same reason I love SXSW.  When you can hangout with people in your industry in a relaxed social setting, you get to know them a lot better.  They become people versus just business cards or Twitter icons.  I greatly enjoyed getting to know the folks I met at SocialFoo and look forward to hopefully running into them again soon.

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

In and Out, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

First time ever.

(via tvparty) (via tvparty)

Jen Robinson's Tumblog: (via tvparty)

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

Can anyone tell me, coherently, what those kids at the New School are even protesting?

If these kids were smart, they'd have a website up.  They'd optimize it for search and maybe even buy some keywords to advertise against "New School" searches.  The ads should say "Why we protested" or something like that... and the site would have a well-written, neatly laid out list of demands.

Instead, after searching around a fair bit, I can't find anything substantive about their plea.  I don't know how I'm suppose to sympathize with their cause if I don't even know what their cause is.

They don't like the way the school is run...or something that?

Huh?

Apparently, the faculty isn't a fan of the way the school is run either--particularly Bob Kerrey's attempts to run the school like an economically viable business. 

God forbid.

Let's get one thing straight.  The costs of education are spiraling out of control--and do you know why?  It's in big part because you've got PhD faculty getting paid 100k a year to teach one class a semester--using the same syllabus they've been using for 20 years--and to publish research in academic journals that maybe 10 other academics ever read. 

Do you think the average tenured college professor works half as hard as the average NYC public high school or elementary school teacher--who is by the way making less than half the pay?  When 95% of university faculty vote against something--I have to question what could all universally make them so upset.  Yup... do more work for the same amount of pay ought to get everyone up in arms.  As an adjunct making $4,000 for the one class I teach each semester, I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for them.

Let's pretend this school was a company.  Could you imagine shareholders or employees trying to affect change the way these students were acting?  Do me a favor.  If you support these kids, the next time you have a problem with your boss, break into his office and "occupy" it.  When security comes to usher you out, scream like a lunatic.

See how far that gets you.

And as for police brutality, I watched the videos. I saw a metal barrier being hurled at police, lots of screaming, and one kid get knocked down by a cop.  That kid proceeded to scream and resist arrest while cops yelled "Stop resisting!"

When are people going to realize that when you throw metal things at cops and resist arrest, you might get a bit jostled during the arrest process?   Thus far, in my 29 years of living in NYC, I've been able to avoid getting beat up by NYC police.  There's a trick to it:  Don't throw metal things at cops and resist arrest.  I know, I know, it seems difficult, but you have to try.

You know who was even angrier than those protesting kids?  The kids who are paying tuition who actually wanted to come in on those days and use those buildings to study.

Here's the way to affect change: If you don't like the way your school is run, you could...

1) Transfer. 

2) Run for student leadership positions and try to get rules enacted or changed by working together with the administration.

3) Expose the issues you have with the school to local media, donors, trustees, etc...with a good old fashioned PR campaign. 

Or, if you'd rather look like a bunch of spoiled rich kids who think they know better than everyone else:

1) Unlawfully commit breaking and entering, carrying mace and crowbars into school buildings. 

2) Create a public disturbance that puts the general public in harm's way (you know, b/c most people's noggins don't mix well with hurled metal barricades). 

3) Completely fail to get any kind of coherent message across. 

At the end of the day, I don't know if Bob Kerrey is good for that school or not--and that's kind of the problem.  By completely failing to make any kind of articulate case against him, these protesters utterly fail to draw any sympathy to their cause.  I put them in the same bucket as the people who spit on US soldiers returning home from Vietnam--so crazed over the idea of protest that they fail to identify any kind of logical and reasonable means to promote their ideas.

Holiday hangover, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Too much agitation for Joy to handle...