Future of Media Discussed at NYU Panel

Internet Week is in full swing here in New York this week. There's tons of great events going on, including today's excellent panel on the Future of Media at NYU. Jack Dorsey, Co-founder and Chairman of Twitter (that's him in the suit in the right), was the first to be asked about whether its success is sustainable.

Jack: "Twitter is a success when people use it as a utility, a part of communication, like email, SMS and the telephone. We've seen phases of usage since it was launched. The product is being driven by users and developers. As for making money from it, by creating Twitter we made it possible for people to come up with different ways of using it and building applications for it, so we're treating the business model in the same way - by establishing patterns in usage, and seeing which ones can be monetized."

Patrick Phillips, Founder of I Want Media, moderated the forum, and then asked Jack if Twitter will be a rival to Google in search.

Jack: "There's room for both. It's a discovery engine. Twitter is more for vanity searches (for people to find out about themselves, their company). But it's also about discovering new content, people and things they didn't know about. News trends up on Twitter. The technology makes it very easy to be anywhere and report about it. It's good for "man on the street" accounts. What's missing is the editorial part - a cohesive narrative around the report. We need to bring journalistic integrity to the mass of messages."

Jack says that for news he checks what's trending up on Twitter first then he goes and reads the full story in the New York Times online.

When asked about social media policy, Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor at the Wall Street Journal referred to the recent memo that was circulated to employees regarding social networking do's and dont's. "Business and pleasure should not be mixed on Facebook and Twitter, don't talk about sources, but mostly the basic message is don't be stupid."



Bonnie Fuller (above), who resigned last year as EVP and editorial director at American Media and is now launching Bonnie Fuller Media, stayed mum about what her new company will be about. She was also coy about telling the audience how many followers she has on Twitter (4200+). But she felt strongly about there being enough room for multiple sources of news. To illustrate she pointed out that women 24-47 comprise a huge portion of the population and have varying tastes and habits so there's plenty of room for PerezHilton, People or The Enquirer or others (looks like she eyeing this demo, doesn't it?).

The conversation then moved to the future, and Alan said that in 10 years we'll have large Kindles or other electronic devices to deliver the news. Wow, that really sounds like the end of newspapers. I discussed this with fellow blogger and socialista Nichelle Stephens, who I bumped into on my way out. I think it would be great for trees, and of course that means no more inky fingers, but it's a concept that takes a little getting used to. We're kind of already there though. I use my HTC Touch to get news when I'm out and have time to kill. But I have to be somewhere where I can get internet access, so no reading on the subway. And the screen is tiny which makes it hard to read long articles. I guess that's what they'll address with the larger devices, but at home I probably would prefer to flip through the pages of a magazine or newspaper, not sure if I'd use a gadget for that, but ya never know. In the end it's all about changing with the times.

Those were some of the things I found interesting today but if you have about an hour to spare and want to watch the video click here.

EconWomen Conference, New York

It's 1:30pm and I haven't had lunch so I'm trying to make a healthy choice from the sumptuous array of sweets at the EconWomen Conference, where a who's who of women in media are converging for an afternoon of kick-ass panels. I opt for the fruits and nuts but also sneak in a few of the checkered shortbread cookies, and settle in my seat.

Wenda Harris Millard, Co-Ceo of Martha Stewart Omnimedia, kicked things off on a humorous note. In his opening comments her interviewer mentioned that MSO had recently reported earnings and that they had been flat, but she quickly pointed out to him that "flat is the new up." Love it.

Wenda then went on to say that the internet is a medium made for women. "Technology has given women a new voice, and they're screaming," she says. The media veteran believes there is an appetite for intelligent, integrated marketing, and that is the direction she's taking MSO.

"Women are seeking the comfort of home, and we're all about how to have a beautiful life every day, so we're well positioned to capture this trend", she adds. Yesterday they announced they invested in a company called Pingg, which makes online invitations, and they're adding their "secret sauce" to it (watch out Evite). They did this because they found out their readers throw an average of 17 parties a year (who'd of thought that the dainty handicrafters were such party animals?). So now they can plan them on Martha's site. And they're not stopping there. Wenda says their big franchises are food, weddings, and holiday celebrations, so they're looking to invest in other properties in those areas (and she's open to suggestions). It's nice to have money.

It's past midnight so I'm going to bed now but I'll continue blogging about some more very useful insights I got at this event tomorrow. Stay tuned for stories on Andrew Shue (who was one of the hotties on Melrose Place and is now a web entrepreneur), Tina Brown (formerly of Vanity Fair and Talk Magazine), Joni Evans of WowoWow.com, Lisa Stone, CEO of BlogHer plus many others. Good night all!

Interview with Web Entrepreneur Michelle Madhok

When Michelle Madhok, founder of shefinds.com, pitched her idea for an online shopping site to AOL, Lucky and Shop Etc. back in 2004, she got shot down by all three of them. At the time she had just ended a 5 year stint at AOL, where she spent 5 years overseeing women’s content. “AOL was a great place to find out what women wanted, with 35 million subscribers, 52% of which are women, says Michelle, who is also founder of Momfinds.com.

For Michelle, the online shopping bug started out as a pastime, doing personal shopping for colleagues and co-workers when they didn’t have time, or didn’t know what to buy. Then she graduated on to sending links of shopping sites to her friends. That’s when she got the idea to do it on a larger scale. But none of the established internet sites she contacted seemed interested, so she decided to do it on her own.

“On Craigslist I found a crazy Ukrainian to build the site. I bought the domain name “shefinds.com” from a porn site that wasn’t using it anymore (love it). AOL had given me a severance so I was bootstrapping, working out of my home with one full-time person, putting together an email newsletter and a blog. It slowly started picking up steam. We got requests from people who wanted to write for us. The more money we'd make the more people I would hire (she now has 40 writers). I then hired an editor and a web designer to produce the newsletters.”

Michelle looked for sponsors right away. She joined affiliate programs like Linkshare and cj.com. Then Bare Necessities offered to sponsor her newsletters and paid her $200 the first time - she was thrilled!

About three months later, smaller businesses like jewelry designers and handbag designers that couldn’t afford to advertise on sites with big female audiences like iVillage contacted her directly and asked to place ads.

When I asked how she promoted her site, Michelle said that she hired someone to help with SEO (search engine optimization), but word about her shopping site spread virally. Now they do weekly “ad swapping” with other sites, and they have deals with MSN, Yahoo!, Real Simple and Lifetime to syndicate their content.

Michelle started out by investing $20,000 of her own money in 2004, and last year made $400,000 in revenues. “I worked hard for it”, she says. “I wrote 600 invoices last year! But it’s nice to work for myself.”

Right now her margins are over 30% but her goal is to increase them to 55%. “We’re still ramping up to get there. I don’t go out trying to sell ads - people come to us, so I need to hire an ad sales person.”

I asked her what advice she had for others that are starting out and here’s what she had to say: “At the beginning I did everything really cheap. I didn’t touch my savings very much. Your first attempt should be a test. Try to find inexpensive legal advice. Always barter or negotiate on price – I got my head shots for free because I exchanged them for free ads.”

She also believes in making your mistakes on someone else’s time/dime. Michelle found consulting gigs through The Hired Guns at first (they place people in specialty positions). She worked on an email marketing campaign for Pfizer which really helped her with her own business.
In addition to her two sites, she's got more in the works. “We want one for brides and then one for the home, and one for food. We want to be the hip consumer reports for shopping online in different vertical markets,” explains Michelle.

That's me and Michelle chatting at a recent Forrester networking event for the new book, Groundswell (a great read for anyone interested in social media). More pictures in my Facebook page.

Mobile Means of Communication

"Don't get caught in analysis/paralysis", was the advice my fellow blogger Lena West gave me recently when I mentioned I'd been stuck choosing between all the different kinds of PDAs and smartphones available. Lena, who writes the Tech Forward blog at Entrepreneur.com, suggested narrowing it down to the 2 or 3 main features that are most important - the "deal breakers" as she calls them.

Now that I have my own business I find myself away from my computer a lot, so I regularly go through "email withdrawal". That means a plan with unlimited internet is a must. I also want to be able to text quickly, so I'd like a full qwerty board (the one with all the keys in it, as opposed to having 2-3 letters in each key). The screen should have a nice size, especially now that my eyes ain't what they used to be. I'm often kicking myself for not remembering to bring my camera to events, so I'd like that built-in to the phone. Other little extras that would be nice are a media player, since I totally skipped the iPod craze and don't own one (that means it needs to come with a decent amount of memory to store the music), and an organizer with a phone book, calculator, calendar and stopwatch. Less important to me are things like Bluetooth, for using a wireless headset; GPS, for finding yourself!; or speakerphone capabilities.

After a little research I narrowed it down to the 4 choices you see below. To help me see things clearly I created a PDA comparison table, which you can click here to see. Keep in mind that these are only online prices - the brick and mortar stores may offer different/better deals so I would check with them as well.

Since the cost varies depending on the service plans and the phones, I totaled up the expenses for the first year, to even things out. Believe it or not the best prices were generally on Amazon.com (free Blackberry Curve if you sign up to a two year plan!), so I put direct links to their specific pages next to the pictures below.


HTC "Touch"

Apple iPhone

Blackjack II

Blackberry Curve 8310 Titanium

To start out slowly I chose the packages with lowest number of minutes and texting, but they all have unlimited internet. I didn't include Verizon because their plans exclude Puerto Rico so that would mean extra roaming charges for me and who needs that. Also T-Mobile's price is less for me because they are my current carrier, so I qualify for a discount.

In the end I'm leaning towards the HTC Touch, only because it's got all the bells and whistles I want plus it's so similar to the iPhone and it actually has the lowest total cost. I'll let you know when I take the plunge...!

For more on smart phones and PDA's, read Entrepreneur Magazine's review in this month's issue: Pack a Punch.

Have you had good luck/bad luck with your portable computing devices? Please share!

New Media in Puerto Rico

Happy New Year everyone! After almost two weeks away I finally got caught up and back to blogging. It was great to be in warm weather - Puerto Rico is fantastic this time of year. The temperature hovered around 80 degrees in the daytime while I was there, then dipped to the 70's at night, and it rained only once!

Those are pretty good conditions for jogging, which I try to do wherever I go, and luckily my mother's apartment where I was staying is close to one of the prettiest trails ever. It's the road that leads to Old San Juan, which still maintains its centuries old, colonial architecture and Spanish charm. I just had to take my camera along a few times to capture some of the beautiful scenery, as you can see from the photo above. For a complete visual log of the palm-tree lined promenade by the sea where I did my runs, visit my Facebook page.

Even though Puerto Rico may often lag in terms of the latest business trends, I was happy to see that new media has made its way there. If you do a search for "Puerto Rico" in Facebook you'll find over 500 pages, including ones for the main newspaper (El Nuevo Dia), three universities, afew radio stations, one for entrepreneurs (with 887 members), one for a major contemporary art musuem, one each for Apple, Walmart and Best Buy, one for a website that sells locally made goods (Antojitos), and one for a restaurant (Payá).

One thing that struck is that back home, networking is done more naturally - even a trip to the supermarket or to the bank will result at least one or two "hellos" and a bit of conversation, which is typical of small towns. I grew up in San Juan and came to the states to go to school when I was 14, so I still have many friends and acquaintances from back then. It seems that everywhere I went I bumped into someone I knew or someone that knew one of my four siblings, who all live there. I can't say the same thing happens to me in New York. It's seldom I'll see a friend on the streets or at an event, unless I expressly plan it that way. Here everything has to be arranged in advance, and God forbid you just drop by a friend's house uninvited! I definitely miss that feeling of community now that I'm back, so I'm grateful there's so many online social networks that exist, even though they may be second best!

How do you connect with friends and business contacts? Share your thoughts!

Using LinkedIn (or Facebook?) for Business

I promised you guys I would write a post about LinkedIn and here it is. I would have been perfectly happy just using Facebook as my business networking site of choice but so many of my friends nixed it, saying that they just used it for connecting socially. My LinkedIn profile had been half-finished for months until I realized that when I google myself (which many people seem to be doing lately), my LinkedIn page shows up as the second item on my results page. A site that can get that kind of ranking definitely commands my attention. And if people are going to be clicking into it, I better make sure the content has all the important information about me and what I do. So I dedicated the past few days to finding out how to use LinkedIn for business, and how it compares with Facebook. Here's what I've uncovered so far...

Beginnings
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is now the sixth-biggest US social network, according to a recent article I found commenting on rumors about News Corp.'s interest in buying the company. They also say that it logged the biggest growth among its peers in October and topped the expansion rates of both MySpace and Facebook, according to Nielsen. LinkedIn attracted about five million US visitors in October, up from 1.7 million a year earlier, and the company estimates it has 17 million users (compared to 59 million for Facebook and something like 300 million on MySpace).

Basic Features
LinkedIn offers some of the functionalities I covered in my 'Facebook 101' post, like you can fill out your 'Profile' to let people know what schools you went to and the companies you've worked for. (The more keyword rich you make this part the better the chances of ending up on more search results.) However, LinkedIn has a system that rates your contacts by degrees of separation: 1 degree means you know them and they know you, 2 degrees means they are a friend of your friend, and so on.

The section called 'Recommendations' allows you to leave or request endorsements from your contacts, which you can only do informally on Facebook by posting messages on people's 'walls'. Facebook also lacks the 'Q&A' section, where you can either ask or answer questions and interact with the entire LinkedIn population, not only your contacts, which can be helpful in getting exposure for your business and driving traffic to your website.

I asked Howard Greenstein, co-founder and NY Chapter Leader of the Social Media Club, (photo below) how effective the site had been for him. He says he recently identified a person he needed to connect with, got a quick introduction from a contact and then hooked them up with a company that wanted to business with them. He likes how with 'Q&A' you can send a question to your friends to get recommendations on potential hires.

"Some companies are encouraging their salespeople to find LinkedIn contacts in firms they're trying to sell to. Corporations are realizing that there's value in being outward facing, and that making more connections can expand their bottom lines," he adds.

Howard believes that people keep stronger business contacts on Linkedin vs Facebook so there's potentially more interesting data for companies to leverage. LinkedIn recently announced that they're opening up the site to outside developers to create unique applications that are specifically tailored to business users. Howard expects that in the near future the online social network will look for additional ways to make it easier to find people in your 2nd & 3rd degrees.

New Features
Here's some cool things that will soon be available on LinkedIn (from the company's Dec. 10 press release):

Partner Applications:

"LinkedIn’s first publishing partner, BusinessWeek, is developing an Intelligent Application that will reside on the BusinessWeek.com website. The application will enable readers of BusinessWeek.com to access their professional network to look up profiles of people and find connections at companies featured in articles."

Conference Calendar application:

"The conference calendar application has a view of upcoming events and people in one’s LinkedIn network who are attending upcoming conferences. Dates are color-coded to indicate how popular the conferences are amongst a user’s professional network, and users can see suggestions of people they may want to meet at the conference based on common network connections. The demo may be viewed at: http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2007/11/linkedin-news-r.html."

Up until now it had been difficult to differentiate friends from business contacts on Facebook. However, that's now changing with Facebook allowing businesses to set up their own"fan" pages, as they explain in their Nov. 6 press release:

"Just like a Facebook user, businesses can start with a blank canvas and add all the information and content they want, including photos, videos, music and Facebook Platform applications. Outside developers have created a range of applications to enhance Facebook Pages, such as booking reservations or providing reviews of restaurant pages, buying tickets on a movie page or creating a custom t-shirt. Companies launching applications for Pages include Fandango, iLike, Musictoday LLC, OpenTable, SeamlessWeb, Zagat Survey LLC and Zazzle."

This move towards a more business friendly environment has ticked off many old time Facebook fans, and some are jumping ship.

So what will it be for businesses, Facebook or Linkedin? The race is on... What do you think? Share your thoughts!

The Tao of Web 2.0

When I first signed up for the lecture entitled "Beyond the Web 2.0 Revolution" at the New School last week, I expected to get the latest scoop on some newfangled technology that will drive the Internet to higher heights. Was I ever wrong. I left there with so many ideas swirling inside my head I just had to write them down. Below you'll find a summary of the main points...

Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka, President of the think tank SophiaBank and professor at Tama University in Tokyo, had already started his presentation by the time I arrived (fashionably late!). The classroom was almost full but I managed to find a lone, empty seat in the second row. It took me a few minutes to catch on to what he was saying, and his thick accent took some getting used to, but slowly it started to make sense.

He was talking about how, at the same time that we move forward into to the future, there's also a resurgence of the past - but with an "upgrade". For example, auctions have been around for centuries, but online auctions have taken the concept and made it much more efficient. Similarly, e-learning adds additional value to the education process by allowing anyone to sign up to online classes with say, Harvard professors (also see "Yale to Make Select Courses Available Online").

He then talked about mutual infiltration, where systems in competition become similar to each other. In the past, businesses were either in cyberspace or in a physical space. Now all businesses are using both real and virtual spaces, evolving into a new integrated system.

Dr. Tasaka went on to define complex systems, which are living systems characterized by evolution and the formation of eco systems. He says that the information revolution has made all systems complex - for ex. companies, markets, society. The Internet is the largest man-made complex system. It's a huge system that no one can control and it's comprised of many eco systems - so it's difficult to predict or analyze or divide into parts. In cyber space, evolution happens quickly, so laws don't work. There's also the "butterfly effect", when small actions can change whole systems, making it difficult to predict the future.

He cited the iPod as an example of eco systems. Its success was due to the evolution of eco systems - both products and services. The Internet, digital music, licenses, lifestyles all had to evolve for the iPod to encounter such huge demand. So when creating a product, companies need to promote the evolution of the whole eco system.

Then he asked, what is the most complex system in this planet? The answer: the human psychology. It's the result of 13.7 billion years of evolution.

Dr. Tasaka foresees changes happening in 7 areas:

1. Innovation
We'll move from beneficiary innovation to participatory innovation.
Web 2.0 is about the wisdom of crowds, or our collective intelligence. To promote this he predicts there will be a new style of innovation. Up until now the government and large corporations were the ones pushing for innovation, with users and customers benefiting from it. From now on we'll see users and customers themselves participating in the process of innovation. The "prosumer", or the producer/consumer, will emerge, just as Alvin Toffler predicted in his book, "The Third Wave".

2. The Economy
We'll move from a monetary economy to a voluntary economy.
The monetary economy, which values the bottom line and is motivated by people wanting to acquire money, will merge with the new "voluntary economy", which is large and invisible, and made up of jobs you don't "see", like housework, and childcare. Web 2.0 will increase the importance of this because social networks give people the ability to pose a question and receive multiple answers. In essence it's people giving out free advice - it's like they're imparting wisdom on a voluntary basis - and that will drive the monetary economy. He cited Amazon's grass roots reviews as an example. Amazon reviewers are the voluntary economy but Amazon is the monetary economy, generating profits from people's reviews. Once at opposite sides, there will be a process of mutual infiltration between the voluntary and monetary economies. (here's an interesting post from OnFocus.com about what might motivate people to contribute reviews on Amazon)

3. Culture
We'll move from an indirect to a direct democracy of culture.
The professor says that historically the sequence of events that brought a product to market would look like this: the company does market research, they develop products and services based on that and then sales will drive their decision making. There's a hidden vote present - consumers vote with their wallets, and if sales are high the company will increase production. Similarly, in the music industry, a music producer will discover an artist, create a huge promotional campaign to generate buzz, and then look for further opportunities to create buzz. But with the advent of Web 2.0, all that is turned upside down. Because many niches exist in cyberspace, an independent artist can release his music on the Internet and become an instant hit when music lovers of his particular genre find him and tell others.

4. Talent
We'll move from single talent to multi-talent professionals.
It used to be that if you wanted to be a professional photographer you would have to train for years and work for peanuts as an assistant until you "paid your dues." But now with digital cameras and editing software it's much easier. People can leave comments on your site and you can improve your work based on their critiques. Then there's the "Da Vinci" effect, where we embrace our many talents and let them blossom. For example, you can be a sales manager by day and an ecologically-minded social entrepreneur during the weekends, compose songs and then release them on the Internet, write a series of essays on your blog and publish them as an eBook with photos that you've taken yourself, and finally you can produce a movie of your last trip to Europe and screen it on YouTube. Phew! Just writing about it makes me tired!

5.Personality
We'll move from a single personality life to multi-personality life
Web 2.0 allows people to express themselves in many ways, through daily blogs, photos, videos, podcasts, etc., which can have a healing effect. We have many personalities deep inside us, but we repress most of them to avoid confusion in daily life. So how can we express our hidden selves? Dr. Tasaka says Web 2.0 gives us three ways:

1. non-verbal expression (like a painting)
2. playing a character in a drama (Ever try playing Second Life?)
3. in an anonymous message (writing a short story)

6. Paradigm
We'll move from a mechanical system paradigm to a living system paradigm
Because we've been successful with science and technology, we tend to view the world as a large mechanical system that we can control, but we're just fooling ourselves. Nature is unpredictable - look at Katrina or global warming. The world is not mechanical - it's a large, living system. In the Internet, all systems are complex living systems. People organize themselves into groups that emerge, evolve, co-evolve and create their own ecology. Because of this, Dr. Tasaka says we will go:

-from analyzing to using intuition
-from controlling to promoting emergence
-from learning the laws to changing the laws
-from using power to creating empathy and coherence
-from predicting the future to creating the future

7. Civilization
We'll move from western civilization to eastern civilization
According to Dr. Tasaka, Eastern civilizations have espoused the living system paradigm more than Western cultures. Chinese medicine uses a holistic approach to cure illness - a change of diet, breathing, meditation, exercise. Western doctors on the other hand, look at the problem and say, let's eliminate it, let's cut off the organ or prescribe medication to cope with it - without investigating the cause. Dr. Tasaka says that same holistic approach used in the East can be used to change the problems of the world.

Diversity is very important in the evolution of eco systems, and the Internet can be used to promote that diversity of value systems. He says that Japan should use the web to introduce the following concepts to the US and the world:

-Yao-yorozu-no-kami, which means eight million Gods, or the co-existence of many value systems

-Sansen-soumoku-kokudo-sikai-bussyo, which is animism/pantheism, or the ability to role-play and become someone else temporarily

-Enishi, the feeling you get when you meet someone - is there a deeper meaning to this encounter? Nothing is by chance...

Web 2.0 makes it possible for us to see what daily life is like in the other side of the world (with for ex. YouTube videos). If we see how other people live, we will be more in touch with the state of the earth. There are many problems on a global level - global warming, terrorism, hunger. The Internet, he believes, was given to us to overcome these problems and grow as human beings.

And that, I finally realized with surprise, is the next "new thing". That's what's beyond Web 2.0. It's not about a new technology or a new gadget that will revolutionize our lives. It's about the Internet becoming an agent for peace and harmony through expanded use of social online networks. As more of us express ourselves freely and openly online, we access our true purpose, our spiritual core. Web 2.0 then allows us to come together with others that are doing the same, which will lead to ever expanding levels of integration and community. For Dr. Tasaka, that's what the next "wave" of the internet is, and he believes we're at the start of what will be a wonderful story for mankind.

Do you agree, disagree? And how might we apply this as entrepreneurs? Share your thoughts!
tao, web 2.0